Looking at the figures, there are 147,000 new domains registered in this time frame, although the number of cancellations exceeded new registrations by more than 10,000 domains. But this is nothing new; last year in the same four-month period the gap had been larger (by more than 12,000). .it names, therefore, albeit in small steps, continue to grow.
Registro’s activities continue with the usual events planned for October: Internet Festival, the festival dedicated to the Web that has been held annually in Pisa since 2011. Under the banner of the key word "artificial" - in the sense of creating and changing reality and everything around us through digital reality - the Cybersecurity Day, the annual cybersecurity event bringing together experts in the field, organised by Registro and the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the CNR of Pisa, will take place as part of the Festival.
In this context, the ad hoc Tutorial-Tour workshops could not be missed. Since the very beginning, Ludoteca has been organising such workshops for schools and the youngest to teach them that surfing can and should be done, but consciously and making good use of digital tools, while also learning to identify and avoid the risks that the Net hides. Speaking of Ludoteca, the new version of the Internetopoli web app has been released; the app was created in 2015 and provides support to schools, children and teachers, to discover and learn about the Web safely and defend ourselves against the various dangers we may encounter on a daily basis. All this is possible, not least through the introduction of gamification, a new feature of this latest version, capable of stimulating the very young with the customisation of paths and the introduction various levels of difficulty.
“Gamification” remains the star of another project, with Ludoteca contributing to it: "Super Cyber Kids" (SCK), the European project funded by the Erasmus+ program, aims to teach cybersecurity concepts through play. The project, in which the CNR is the lead partner with the Institute of Informatics and Telematics and the Institute of Educational Technology, will offer students and teachers an innovative play and training toolkit dedicated to cybersecurity. SCK provides a wide range of digital materials, in a variety of formats, useful for introducing and deepening cybersecurity topics in the classroom through a learning mode that goes hand in hand with playful activity. Digital materials will also include “Nabbovaldo e il ricatto del cyberspazio” (Nabbovaldo and the Blackmail from Cyberspace), the video game created by CNR-IIT, a serious game designed to bring children and young people closer to cybersecurity issues, and translated into each language of the partner countries.
The initiatives carried out by Ludoteca have been countless, also including targeted surveys, the results of which are now being collected, thanks to the collaboration with the Department of Education, Languages, Interculture, Literature and Psychology (FORLILPSI) of the University of Florence: a research project was launched with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of some of the activities of Ludoteca by Registro .it; along with a sample survey addressed to adolescents to explore digital skills and attitudes related to STEM disciplines, with a focus on IT and cybersecurity.
As always, statistics accompany us into the world of the .it, along with updates on the new agreement on data transfer between Europe and the US., and news about the world of the Net, gTLDs and ccTLDs.
Read more in the latest issue of the Quarter.