Carlo Mazzone

Carlo comes from an educational family: his father was a headmaster, and his mother and sister were both teachers. Carlo himself initially gained a degree in computer science and worked for several national corporations as an IT consultant. However, he was drawn back to teaching through the technical training courses he conducted while working in the private sector – an experience that also helped him take a scientific approach to teaching. Since 2004, he has worked in the Italian public school system while also maintaining his skills as a consultant and keeping up-to-date on what is happening in industry – something that informs his teaching and benefits his pupils too.

Carlo’s present school is the ITI G.B.B. Lucarelli in Benevento, an area where unemployment rates are high. His main innovation has been in creating teaching materials based on extensive experience of what works in his subject. Over the years, his work on C and C++ has become a bestseller in Italy and is also used in some universities. He also holds the official title of Digital Animator, meaning that he guides his school’s implementation of the government’s National Digital Plan.

To better organise his teaching and feedback, Carlo has set up several e-learning platforms to manage and streamline his students’ work. Lessons are centred around the principle of “vivariumware”, which (loosely translated) means a kind of nursery training material that will go on to encourage and create bigger things. His students have had great success in the Junior Achievement competitions for business education, winning the Campania regional phase and the Italian national competition in 2019. This in turn led to his class representing Italy in the international competition in Lille, where they achieved the runner-up place. Aside from the Junior Achievement competitions, his students have also won the EU-sponsored Youth and Science competition in Milan, and Carlo himself has created links with students in Malta, Poland, and a number of other countries.

With the Global Teacher Prize fund, Carlo would expand the award-winning work of a student company set up in his school last year to help farmers co-ordinate supply, guarantee livestock traceability, and reduce time costs. With extra funding, this tool could be scaled up and developed to grow beyond local use, potentially enabling fully digitised farms and 100% traceability of the country’s cattle. In addition, Carlo would use some funds to help students in his school who encounter social and economic obstacles to their academic achievement.