Focus Storia

For the 2023/2024 school year, numerous initiatives aimed at teachers, students and families have been organised. All conceived by Focus, Focus Scuola, Focus Junior and Focus Wild, the brand leaders in publishing in Italy for the Mondadori Group, which, once again this year, are confirmed as promoters of innovative educational proposals for the school world.

With the start of the school year, the Focus Scuola website will, as always, be available to teachers with news, insights and useful tips to make their lessons more engaging and inclusive.

The Focus Scuola Newsletter, curated by the editorial staff of Focus Junior in collaboration with a team of specialised, professional journalists, is back. The Newsletter, which has more than 20,000 Italian teachers already subscribed to it, is aimed at primary and secondary school teachers. The main goal is to provide ideas and playful and innovative proposals to get the students more involved during lessons. Each week Focus Scuola Newsletter offers topical insights for lectures and group work, ideas for science labs, STEAM worksheets to make science a more exciting subject, in-depth features explained in a simple way to explain complicated topics, and features on innovative teaching methods and classroom management thanks to advice from top experts. In addition to being able to preview all Focus initiatives for the school world, teachers will also have the opportunity to share class projects with the entire registered teacher community.

Here is the link to subscribe to the Newsletter.

Starting in October, the Academies by Focus Junior, Focus and Focus Storia which, every year, involve hundreds of classes and thousands of students, will resume.
Focus Junior’s Journalism Academy, aimed at young people in primary and secondary schools and in which more than 500 classes and over 10,000 students took part last year, includes a three lessons course dedicated to media and environmental education. The first two events explain how to create a magazine, how to write an article, and how to recognise fake news in a simple and fun way, while the third deals with climate change and ecological transition. The goal of the Focus Junior Academy is to encourage critical thinking and inform the youngsters on two topics that are crucial today in order to become informed citizens. The Academy is organised in collaboration with the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (Cicap) and the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Cmcc).

“Thanks to the Academies’ initiative the editorial staff of Focus Junior help schools and teachers throughout Italy to explain complex issues through engaging storytelling that captures the attention of the youngest learners,” said Sarah Pozzoli, Director of Focus Junior. “We journalists have the same goal as teachers: to raise future citizens who can think critically and adopt a more sustainable lifestyle”, she concluded.

The Academies of Focus and Focus Storia, aimed at students in secondary schools and in which more than 100 classes and over 2,500 students participated last year, involve a course of four events during which young people step into the shoes of actual editors for each issue, actively participate in source and image research, attend editorial meetings, and are involved in analysing the commissioned work and publishing content on the various social channels, where their proposals and ideas will be added and promoted.

Raffaele Leone, Director of Focus, thus reiterates the importance of establishing synergistic collaboration with schools: “The school world is doubly important to us: on the one hand because we feel that teachers and their educational mission are close to our hearts, and on the other hand because discovering a dialogue with the new generation, who increasingly keep themselves informed through additional tools and channels besides print media, is a strong motivation for us. We’re dealing with a positive two-way exchange: showing how to make a science magazine gets young people involved in the topics covered, in reading, in researching sources. Seeing how they draw on tools other than print prompts us to create formats and languages that are more suited to them. We can say that Focus is one of the most innovative tools on the market in terms of dissemination and multimedia, with its magazines, website, social media platforms, podcasts, Academies and live events that make the annual Focus Live a success,” concluded the Director.

Completing the Focus offer for schools for the 2023/2024 school year is a great new feature: the Focus School Camp, innovative educational projects aimed at all Italian schools on all levels, representing a revolutionary way of thinking about and experiencing educational trips. A comprehensive new proposal that starts with classroom training, moves through practice during camp, and ends with the development of a final digital project that will be presented in class and posted on the Focus School Camp digital bulletin board. The themes of the School Camp by Focus Junior, Focus Wild, Focus and Focus Storia are varied, and designed specifically to meet any educational needs of different school classes and age groups of students.

After the great success of two editions of the Focus Junior Summer Camp, the Focus School Camp is again collaborating with Sunnylife, the market-leading tour operator in the school trip and summer camp sector.

Finally, teachers will also be able to subscribe to the Focus brand magazines this year using their Carta del Docente and, from mid-October, the Bonus Scuola returns, allowing educational institutions to apply for a subsidy for subscriptions and magazines purchased during the school year by making a specific request to: sgc@mondadori.it.

Focus, Focus Storia, Focus Junior and Focus Wild launch the first School Camps edition, a new project conceived in partnership with Sunny Life, a company specialised in tourism and cultural travels for children between 6 to 18 years of age and affirmed tour operator of the Focus Junior Summer Camps.

The School Camps provide innovative and complete educational offers focused on students and teachers, starting from in-class training to on-field experience at the camp and ending with the drafting of final summary in digital format.

The Focus system brands pursue their licensing development through this initiative, by further extending their educational offer to educational trips: real training, interdisciplinary and customised courses – using the tested STEAM approach – to spread knowledge on scientific and mathematical subjects with the help of other disciplines such as art, history and architecture.

Such activity, designed for primary and secondary school students, aims to stimulate and involve the youngest by exploiting knowledge and developing skills. Such project asserts the attention of the Focus, Focus Storia, Focus Junior and Focus Wild brands towards both the education of the youngest and highly topical issues, such as sustainability and inclusion.

In addition to being real learning workshops, the 2023/2024 School Camps allow children to live truly unforgettable experiences under the guidance of professionals.

• Focus, a leading brand of scientific information, provides a package of ideas specifically designed for secondary schools and studied around the most current educational topics, with particular interest and insight into the technical, scientific and technological fields.
• Focus Storia, a magazine dedicated to the most striking historical and cultural facts and great protagonists of the past and present, offers a special catalogue conceived for secondary schools and designed to revive those places in which traces of our history are still evident.
• Focus Junior, a point of reference in the kids’ segment, suggests experiences developed to introduce topics such as innovation, sustainability and inclusion to primary and secondary school students – through a multidisciplinary and transversal approach – always according to the needs and age of such young learners.
• Focus Wild, an intergenerational brand dedicated to the world of animals and nature, provides primary and secondary schools with a vast repertoire of experiences conceived to specifically attract the students’ attention towards the most current and urgent environmental issues, always in an engaging, fun and exciting way.

Verona, Milan, Genoa, Rome, Pompeii and Matera are just some of the destinations planned for the School Camps of Focus, Focus Storia, Focus Junior and Focus Wild. All destinations were selected by the Mondadori Group brand among the vast range of cruises and school trips suggested in Sunny Life’s catalogue.

The complete and updated catalogue will be available on the following link: http://focuscamp.it/.

Focus Storia, the Mondadori Group brand dedicated to the personalities, events and curiosities of history, is enhancing its offer with new formats and content which, from the magazine to the web and social media, extends also to podcasts.

In fact, the magazine edited by Raffaele Leone has made available to the public the portal “Storia in Podcast” (History in Podcasts), Italy’s most complete audio library to enable readers and users to discover in a new way the protagonists and facts that have marked human civilisation.

An unprecedented and exclusive journey, with over 180 continuously updated episodes divided into 10 thematic areas that talk about the great events of the past in a simple but rigorous approach, thanks to the contribution of contemporary historians and commentators from leading Italian universities.

Enhancing the “Storia in podcast” series, an episode created to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of Princess Diana is now available. From her origins, in Sandringham, in Norfolk, to her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981 to the tragic car accident in which she lost her life in the late summer of 1997.

A special episode that is part of the Focus Storia podcast collection dedicated to the events of the ever-popular British royal family: from “The Crown: from fiction to reality”, in which the writer and historian Hugo Vickers discusses the celebrated Netflix TV series, up to “Prince Philip” and “The Queen’s Corgis”.

A selection of content, available on the Focus-branded web site, that already reaches an overall audience of 6 million readers and users (Source: Nielsen Data Fusion, November 2020) as well as on the Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast and  Amazon Podcast platforms, where over 1.1 million listeners have been recorded, confirming the success of this innovative format which completes the o Focus Storia offer.

“Podcasts are an extraordinary tool able to attract a broad and complementary audience alongside the fans who already follow us on the Focus Storia magazine. Adding podcasts is part of a wider project aimed at making Focus an authentic multimedia world accessible across all platforms on the market. In addition, a history podcast, in a country like ours, that is full of entrepreneurial excellence that, while relevant to the present, also has an interesting, often local and family-based, past, will also enable us to examine this reality which is unknown to most people,” declared the editor of the magazine, Raffaele Leone.

The Focus Storia community has also been won over by the many episodes that look at great personalities for the present and the past: from the last King of Italy, Umberto II, in the words of his daughter Maria Gabriella di Savoia, to Dante Alighieri and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the football phenomenon Diego Armando Maradona. And then the great interest in current events, with the success of an exclusive docuseries: from the story of Alfredino, 40 years after the tragedy of Vermicino, up to ten episodes on the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, with previously unseen photos and archive recordings that have never been heard before.

New columns and collaborations for Focus, the Mondadori Group brand leader in the popular science segment 6.4 million readers and users and a community of over 3 million followers on social media, up by 40% since February 2020.

From this month Focus Domande & Risposte, the magazine that offers more than 250 questions and answers about the most incredible and interesting facts, is changing its frequency and becoming a monthly. And for the occasion the title is launching an exclusive collaboration with Massimo Cannoletta.

The celebrated champion of the TV quiz show L’Eredità, whose knowledge captured the hearts of the Italian audience. Will be the protagonist of a feature entitled “Te lo dice Massimo” in Focus Domande & Risposte and a weekly appointment on the Focus Facebook and Instagram profiles, where he will engage the community in an exclusive video questions and answers format.

“The strength of Focus lies in the care and attention given to providing detailed background and the way we search for news, the authoritativeness of our contributors and interlocutors, but also in the curiosity, the passion and enthusiasm we put in every day to offer our readers a quality product that is able to speak to everyone. Consequently, when I had the change to chat with Massimo Cannoletta, and when I saw his enthusiastic hunger for knowledge and his drive to explain, I thought it would be brilliant to add him to the team of journalists and collaborators that make the world of Focus a great multimedia platform for popular science,” declared Raffaele Leone, editor of Focus.

But that’s not all that’s new. Cannoletta will also have column in Focus Storia, Focus system magazine dedicated to the events, personalities and curiosities of the past and present. Every month in “Curioso per caso” he will allow readers to discover historic and artistic treasures form different countries in the world.

The super champion will also be the protagonist of an exclusive interview in the monthly Focus, in the issue on newsstands from 23 February, where he talks about the secrets of his memory.

Originally from Lecce, Cannoletta, who is 46, has a degree in political science. He is passionate about spreading culture and knowledge and became famous with the audience of the early evening quiz show presented by Flavio Insinna, participating in 51 episodes and beating record after record.
“I grew up reading Focus branded magazines, and I got many of the questions on L’Eredità right having learned them from these magazines. So I am absolutely honoured to become a part of the big Focus family,” declared Massimo Cannoletta.

Focus is Italy’s most widely-read magazine, with 6.4 million readers and users (Source: Nielsen Media Impact Data fusion, Amy 2020). It is increasingly appreciated and engaging on sempre social networks, where it has a growing audience of over 3 million followers (Source: Shareablee, February 2020). The magazine is the core of a multimedia ecosystem that includes the web, a TV channel, social media and events: a distinctive point of reference for issues of great current significance, from science to technology and nature, and thanks to contributions from authoritative voices of international renown and an approach that is always rigorous and fresh.