(February 16, 2017) From February 14 a new online teaching experience in the USA has opened sponsored by ICoN Consortium, a network of 18 universities that operates under an agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This time teachers became students: for four months 14 teachers from the Italian School "G. Marconi" in New York will study the Italian language through ICoN courses, followed by an expert tutor, within two virtual classes. ICoN makes available to teachers the courses "Destinazione Italiano", specifically designed for an American audience. In the virtual classroom the teachers, interacting in forums with tutors and fellow students, will have the opportunity to immediately practice the language they are learning. Tutors will periodically give written or oral assignments, targeted to a creative re-use of structures and uses learned in the course. It is a new experience, the teaching of Italian to teachers, which fits into the groove of a major effort promoted by ICoN for the promotion of Italian language and culture in the United States. A major commitment to the training of teachers of Italian in the USA: six American entities (ODLI in Miami, NOI in Detroit, Casa Italiana in Washington, AIS in Philadelphia, IACE in New York, CASIT in Boston) required a training course for their teachers, organized by ICoN in 2016, under the Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2014, moreover, ICoN offers the course ICoN AP Italian Language and Culture online: an Italian course for the AP Italian exam preparation in the United States, aimed at teachers and students in their last year of high school. The course, approved by the College Board, the managing body of Advanced Placement exams, which allows you to hoard free credit to bring to the University, is already used in many schools and has fundamentally contributed to the achievement an year in advance of the goal of being able to count on at least 2,500 examinees in each school cycle to maintain this program necessary for the consolidation and increase in the study of Italian. Decisive in this strategic action was the collaboration first and foremost between ICoN and the managing body IACE New York. (Red)

ABOUT / ICON: AN INVALUABLE ACTIVITY

"In just two years, ICoN activities in the US has become invaluable - said Silvana Mangione, ICoN coordinator of activities in the United States -. The ICoN online courses allow you to reach every corner of this vast country and are usable in the classroom by giving practical help to teachers, but also at home, on every conceivable electronic device, from computers to tablets to mobile phones". "I am very pleased - continued Mangione – by the trust placed in us by the School 'G. Marconi' which, founded in 1977, is the only bilingual and bicultural school in North America to accompany pupils from kindergarten to high school graduation. Fully recognized, when the Ministry of Education has also asked that the English language teachers were speaking Italian, the school turned to us, giving further evidence of the respect enjoyed by ICoN courses at all levels from public and private representatives ".