Critical Making is a newly approved Erasmus+ Forward Looking Project, that will start on the 1st of January, 2024. In preparation for the project start, some partners (Politecnico di Torino, the Links Foundation and the Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten) organized a hands-on activity, open to teachers of Politecnico di Torino and other collaborators of the TLlab.

On December 7th, teachers gathered in the nice "Palazzina TLlab", the key space for all activities of the Teaching and Language Lab, and were guided by Flavio Renga and Chiara Ciociola (Links Foundation) in the analysis of 4 different scenarios that may contain scientifically inaccurate (or outright wrong) information. In a 3-step process, teachers were asked to identify the elements of "critical thinking", "making" and "disinformation" in one of the scenarios, to share their ideas in a group and synthesize them, and finally to start working on a possible definition for 'critical making' by reshuffling the groups and comparing ideas and insights. The 2-hour activity went out in a breeze, and the results presented by the moderators were intriguing and promising, and will be used as a starting point for the project activities.

The project AccessCoVE aims to structure excellence in Vocational Education and Training in the field of Accessibility, by establishing a European multi-level innovative and constantly growing Centre of Vocational Excellence - the AccessCoVE - in the field of accessibility for individuals with disabilities.

On November 30, 2023, Politecnico di Torino organized an event on the topic of "Disability, Research, and Intersectionality", with talks by several researchers and professors who are actively involved in the field of accessibility. The event was organized in occasion of the International Day of rights of persons with disabilities.

In that context, we held a short presentation of the AccessCoVE project, its partners, its objectives, and the ways in which the project will involve the whole research community of Politecnico di Torino, and other national associations and research centers.

Lo sviluppo del pensiero critico (Critical Thinking) è uno degli obiettivi fondamentali della formazione a tutti i livelli, ma anche un tema rilevante a livello sociale, per il contrasto alle fake news, specialmente in ambito STEM.

Il Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica ed il Teaching and Language Lab, in collaborazione con la Fondazione Links e con la Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten, organizza un workshop collaborativo per esplorare le possibilità educative, basate soprattutto su metodiche sperimentali ed esperienziali, e per immaginare insieme attività didattiche che aiutino la comprensione e il contrasto delle fake news in campo scientifico e tecnologico.

I risultati del workshop saranno resi accessibili a tutta la comunità accademica e forniranno un importante input per il progetto Erasmus+ "Critical Making" a cui partecipa il Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento DAUIN e TLlab) partecipa.

At the Politecnico di Torino, the e-Lite research group from the Department of Control and Computer Engineering (DAUIN) presented their advancements at the PhD poster day 2023. The event featured research posters by two PhD students.

The first poster by Luca Mannella, titled "Supporting Developers in the Cybersecurity of IoT Systems," presented some tools for helping developers create more secure IoT applications (with a particular focus on smart homes). The goal set forth was to make the development process accessible for developers with varying levels of expertise in cybersecurity. The poster introduced a threat model for smart home gateways, pointing out the risks associated with these central devices in managing smart home applications, especially when third-party plug-ins are involved. The poster also discussed the application of the Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) standard inside an extensible smart home gateway. Allowing plug-in developers to define their plug-ins' network requirements can help secure the whole smart home.

Tommaso Calò's poster, "Code Generation From Visual Representations," addressed the challenge of translating web UI designs into code. It underscored the labor-intensive aspect of this translation process, necessitating frequent revisions between the design and development phases. To address this, the research presented a multimodal Transformer architecture designed to automate the translation process by concurrently processing textual and visual information. The approach aims to advance existing methodologies by enhancing the architectural framework and introducing a challenging dataset that serves as a new benchmark for future advancements in the field.

For those interested in delving deeper into the research presented at the DAUIN PhD poster day 2023, we have made available the posters for downloading:

• Supporting Developers in the Cybersecurity of IoT Systems.
• Code Generation From Visual Representations.

Il Politecnico di Torino lancia oggi la prima versione pubblica della propria applicazione mobile per gli studenti, denominata PoliTO Students, per i sistemi operativi Android e iOS.

La nuova applicazione, sviluppata da zero con tecnologia React Native, è nata grazie allo sforzo congiunto dei tecnici della Direzione ISIAD e dei professori del Dipartimento DAUIN, affiancati da valenti studenti ed ex-studenti di Ingegneria Informatica. Il percorso di progettazione e sviluppo dell'applicazione, iniziato circa 18 mesi fa, ha seguito un processo aperto e collaborativo, coinvolgendo in tutte le fasi gli utenti finali (studenti, ex studenti e futuri studenti) attraverso interviste, focus group, e test di usabilità di mockup e prototipi. L'interfaccia utente è stata completamente ridisegnata partendo dalle esigenze quotidiane di studenti e studentesse, approdando ad un design moderno e flessibile.

I principali progettisti e sviluppatori della App sono stati due studenti di Ingegneria Informatica, Luca Pezzolla ed Umberto Pepato (supervisionati da Fulvio Corno), che hanno svolto la propria tesi di Laurea Magistrale sul tema, ed hanno continuato a lavorare con il Politecnico dopo la Laurea Magistrale per portare a termine il progetto.

L’intelligenza artificiale trova già applicazione in molti settori, come la sanità, i trasporti, la didattica e l’intrattenimento. Più interagiamo con questi strumenti, meglio riusciamo a valutarne l’impatto economico e sociale e a guidarne l’evoluzione, regolamentando anche gli aspetti etici.

Il CSI Piemonte inaugura un nuovo formato di convegno, denominato "CSI Xperience", sul tema della Intelligenza Artificiale e delle sue relazioni con la società. L'evento è previsto per il 17 ottobre 2023 ed è aperto da Fulvio Corno, attuale presidente del Comitato Tecnico Scientifico del CSI.

All’interno della Milano Digital Week, il Politecnico di Milano realizza AI_EDU CAMP: un palinsesto articolato di workshop, talk, eventi performativi per riflettere in modo approfondito sul futuro della didattica con l’AI e preparare insegnanti, formatori e studenti ad un suo utilizzo efficace e sostenibile.

Le iniziative sono progettate e gestite da METID “Innovation Teaching and Learning” e Scuola del Design del Politecnico di Milano e il Collettivo AAA (alumni Polimi).

AccessCoVE (European Centre of Vocational Excellence in Accessibility) is an Erasmus+ project that aims to structure excellence in Vocational Education and Training in the field of Accessibility. Twenty-five partners from four different countries (Greece, Sweden, Spain, and Italy) joined their forces to establish a European multi-level innovative and constantly growing Centre of Vocational Excellence - the AccessCoVE - in the field of accessibility for individuals with disabilities (i.e. individuals with impairments and elders). The project is coordinated by prof. Konstantinos Papadopoulos from University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, Greece).

On October 2, 2023, Politecnico di Torino's students will start the first semester in the new academic year. Welcome back!

Members of the e-Lite group teach various courses in the semester, some of them being elective. Such courses are offered in different bachelors' and masters' degrees. Courses' topics include web applications, databases, and human-computer interaction.

We invite students to familiarize themselves with the courses taught by group members and consider them for their choices. Continue to read for more details and useful links.

On September 6-8, 2023, the e-Lite group will attend (in person) the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT 2023) in Lisbon, Portugal. Alberto Monge Roffarello will present the regular paper "Nudging Users or Redesigning Interfaces? Evaluating Novel Strategies for Digital Wellbeing Through inControl" on Wednesday, 6 September at 13:30 (Session 2).