The document discusses the PSO (Portale Scuola in Ospedale), an online platform in Italy that supports students in hospitals and those receiving domiciliary learning, enabling them to continue their education during illness. It outlines the platform’s goals, its evolution from initial systems to a comprehensive portal, and its functionality for users including parents, teachers, and hospital workers. The document highlights the importance of user interaction, feedback, and ongoing improvements to keep the educational system connected and effective for those in need.

1. PSO (Portale Scuola in Ospedale)
The collector for the experiences in the field
of the school in the hospital
and the domiciliary learning in Italy
Matteo Uggeri | Sheffield | VISCED
22.05.2012

2. Glossary
 Scuola in Ospedale: a national project funded by the
Ministry of Education (MIUR) to allow the students of
every school level to keep on studying while they’re
ill.
 Sezione Ospedaliera (SO): Hospital section:
 a place/situation in a hospital where children/kids can
study;
 Istruzione Domiciliare (ID): Domiciliary Learning:
 When teachers visit a children in home therapy to allow
him to carry on the studies.

3. A didactical, cultural and social
value
 The system provides services oriented to
guarantee the Right to Education to all those
students admitted to Hospital, in Day hospital
or Home Therapy.

4. What is PSO?
 PSO is the online portal for the
School in the Hospital
and the Domiciliary Learning.
 http://pso.istruzione.it
 It has two main goals:
 for the MIUR (Ministry of Education): gather, monitor and
parse all the financial and organizational data inserted by
the USRs (school units) of all Italian regions;
 for the final users (parents, teachers and workers of
schools and hospitals): find the necessary information and
communicate among them through the forum.

5. From loose excel files to an integrated system (CMS + database)
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SYSTEM

6. La situazione iniziale: fogli Excel
METID – Politecnico di Milano

7. La prima versione informatica
METID – Politecnico di Milano

8. Oggi: un portale completamente nuovo, dinamico e costantemente aggiornato
METID – Politecnico di Milano

10. One step backward
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ONLINE
PLATFORM: HSH

11. What we had:
HSH (Hospital School Home)
 Learning project - http://hsh.istruzione.it
 mainly online
 aimed at teachers working in hospital - about 600 teachers
involved in 2 years (?)
 Main focus: home teaching for patients in home therapy
 Developed in collaboration with the CNR in Genova.
 The project had also local developments:
 Molise - www.hshmolise.polimi.it
 Basilicata - http://hsh.metid.polimi.it
 Lombardy - www.hshlombardia.it
 Abruzzi – next June

12. HSH (Hospital School Home):
the platform

13. What did not work with it
 Lack of promotion
 Complicated procedures for registration
 Problems related to the very young target
 Control paranoia
 Lack of participation
 No incentives
 Unclear aims
 Loose interface/system design
 Lack of compliance with the W3C standards

14. What we needed
 Save money
 Involve users
 Allow open and easy communication among
them
 Improve the bottom up strategy through the
dissemination of good practices
 Be 100% compliant with usability standards
and PA limitations (i.e. IE).
 Improve the already existing PSO portal

15. A real answer to real needs
THE SUCCESS OF THE ONLINE
PORTAL AND ITS FORUM

16. Users
 Parents of hospitalized children/children in DL
 Teachers (involved or not in the SiH)
 Volunteers
 Workers [or operators?]
 Researchers
 USR responsibles
 MIUR

17. A slow step by step growth
Phase 1
 Design and creation of the database for the ministry
(1 user) and the USRs (18 users)
 Provide:
 News
 Basic general static information
 Regional services [no login]
providing data for all the regions with:
 Name, Tel. number, mail…
 All the involved hospitals
 All the involved schools
Top hit: the regulation
 All the hospital sections page 

18. The database
 It really helps the single USRs to provide data
to the ministry (and the final users), which are:
 Detailed
 Updated
 Complete

19. The database

20. The database
 It’s fundamental for the Ministry to:
 Collect data about all the:
 Teachers
 Schools
 Hospitals
 Hospitals sections
 Training courses (for teachers)
 Domiciliary learning actions/projects
 School in the hospital fluxes
 Check the balance between the investment in each region and
the relative actions
 Define the next allocated budget

21. Regional services

22. A slow step by step growth
Phase 2
 Online forum for all registered users
 Main categories designed according to the
ministry:
 Introduce yourself…
 Teachers and operators [or workers?]
 Parents
 Students
 Events
 Suggestions and troubles

23. Forum
“This is the best forum I
ever visited... Interesting
and very, very deep...”
Claudia, 15 maggio 2012

24. A slow step by step growth
Phase 3
 Improved graphics:
 Change of colours from dark institutional blue to cute green and
orange
 Specific drawings made by an external illustrator
 Rounded corners
 Good practices:
 Reading the forum discussion
 Selecting the good practices
 Contact the user
 Writing an article
 Putting it in homepage
 Re-contacting the user

25. Good practices and new colours

26. What made the portal so loved
 Nice and user friendly interface
 Quick bug fixing
 Test on small groups getting wider
 Daily check of the forum discussions by our
PM and the ministry

27. The key factor of the success
 Real needs, as we said
 A good workteam
 A durable convention with the ministry (since 2007)
 Reciprocal trust between the developer and the funder
 No budget reports  No waste of time
 Denis (a real, motivated and well paid human being as a tutor
and factotum for the ministry)
 A motivated PM (me, yes)
 Co-design in strict relationship with a real user and the
Ministry

28. A further step:
Phase 4 : keep the interest alive
 Real F2F events (Turin end of May)
 Blog implementation and full integration
 Press promotion (Espresso)
 Connection with other international similar
experiences (we’re so glad to be here)
 Arise the interest of the Minister of Education
 Contact other active operators in the field
(associations, etc…)

29. The blog of good practices

30. Bottom up suggestions
 We can’t afford a tailor made online
environment…
 …but we can help teachers, schools,
volunteers to spread their experiences
 For instance to use web 2.0, social network
tools or other ways to shorten the distance
among hospitalized children with their
buddies and teachers

31. Examples:
 Radio K2:
 radiok2.wordpress.com/
 sites.google.com/site/k2videok2/
 MSN + FB to create a virtual classroom:
 http://pso.istruzione.it/index.php/easyblog/live-messanger-e-fa
 A happy end story:
 http://pso.istruzione.it/index.php/easyblog/la-storia-a-lieto-fine
 Multimedia games:
 http://www.meyer.it/lapresadellapastiglia/

32. The blockbuster of our projects
STATISTICS

33. Statistics - 1

34. Statistics - 2
 Total visits [May 2010 – May 2012]: 58.693
 Users 549
(about 100 new subscriber per month – even during Xmas holidays)
 Forum [Nov. 2011 - May2012]:
 Total visits 2.336
 Messages: 329
 Topics: 68

35. Credits
 MIUR - Ministero dell'Istruzione,
dell'Università e della Ricerca
 Speranzina Ferraro (D. G. per lo Studente):
Content and direction
 Denis Ruggeri:
Consulting, forum tutoring
 Politecnico di Milano - METID
 Susanna Sancassani: Direction
 Matteo Uggeri: Project Management
 Andrea Mauro: PHP programming
 Andrea Parisi: Visual Design e accessibility
 Bruno Aliprandi: Server management
 Ruggero Pucci: Content check

36. Grazie
 Matteo Uggeri:
 Matteo.uggeri@polimi.it
 METID:
 www.metid.polimi.it
 PSO:
 http://pso.istruzione.it