What brings an educational technology into schools, and how do we know it worked?

Turma do Som and the Plataforma Digital de Educação Musical · 2008–2014

Technological development project with CNPq, FINEP and Escribo (2010–2014): a system with three views (games and applications for the student, a complete music initiation course for the teacher, indicators for management), "so that schools can teach music classes even without licensed teachers". It produced 32 educational games registered in the Lattes (2010–2012) and 20 educational animation videos, with pedagogical consulting by Cecília Cavalieri França and the team of Waldcelma Silveira, Renan Lima, Fabio Florencio, Francisco Spencer and Frank Urben. Giordano Cabral was an RHAE/CNPq research fellow from 2008 to 2010 and director of technology and creation at Escribo, an edtech and digital publisher of games, animation and interactive systems for education. The printed material: Turma do Som: Livro 1 and Manual do Professor (2012) and the four Daccord courses of 2011 (music creation, recorder, keyboard and guitar), each with a student book and a teacher book. Papers at ABEM 2011 (Vitória) and ISME 2014 (Porto Alegre, Dealing with Challenges in Music Education through Active Music Making, with Cavalieri França, Magali Kleber, Vania Fialho and Juciane Araldi Beltrame). The press kit of May 2012 presents the product as a response to the deadline set by law; Instituto Claro covered the platform in use at school in December 2012.

Nós da Educação: Música · 2014

Textbook for 4th and 5th grade of elementary school, Editora Ática, São Paulo, 98 pp., ISBN 9788508165995, with Cecília Cavalieri França, Magali Kleber, Juciane Araldi Beltrame, Cleusa Cacione and Vania Malagutti Fialho.

Games, gamification, and virtual reality in schools · 2017–2019

Motivational Impact of Virtual Reality on Game-Based Learning: Comparative Study of Immersive and Non-Immersive Approaches, with Tassio de Souza Silva, Edwin Marinho and Kiev Gama (SVR 2017, Curitiba; doi.org/10.1109/SVR.2017.28), compares the motivational impact of immersive and non-immersive games with students at NAVE Recife. The chapter Beyond the Fun: Games and Gamification Under the Pedagogy for Liberation, with Yvonne Costa Carvalho and Veronica Teichrieb (Handbook of Research on Immersive Digital Games in Educational Environments, IGI Global, 2019, ch. 14; doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5790-6.ch014), reads case studies of commercial games and gamification in a Brazilian school through the lens of the pedagogy of liberation. The master's theses of Diego Leonardo Chaves Silva (gamification in a continuous classroom feedback system, 2017) and Rogério Barreto Martins (educational games at the Instituto Federal Baiano, 2017) date from the same period.

Teacher training · 2016–2019

ProfLab, Creative Training for Teachers (Formações Criativas para Professores), a teaching project since 2016; the short courses Gamification in Education (2017), ProfLab: Game Design Thinking (2018) and Game Design Thinking for Educators (2019); and the Brazilian Creative Learning Network (2018–, with Guilherme Sandler). The workshop is described at ProfLab.

Computational thinking and gender in elementary and lower secondary education · 2021–2025

With Mychelline Souto Cunha and Liliane Sheyla da Silva Fonseca (Unicap): gender-sensitive teaching materials (EDUCOMP 2021; doi.org/10.5753/educomp_estendido.2021.14878); the storytelling Pensando computacionalmente com Ana (Thinking computationally with Ana), built on the four sources of self-efficacy and validated by experts (SBIE 2022; doi.org/10.5753/sbie.2022.224948); the systematic review of 36 studies on gender and computational thinking (RENOTE 21, 2023; doi.org/10.22456/1679-1916.134331); and the doctoral thesis of Mychelline Souto Cunha, Abordagem sensível ao gênero para o ensino do pensamento computacional no Fundamental I (A gender-sensitive approach to teaching computational thinking in elementary school; PPGCC/UFPE thesis no. 660, 02/24/2025, principal advisor; CIn portal).

MOOCs, peer learning and technology in schools · 2013–2017

Master's theses by Vivian Facundes Dantas (a MOOC platform from a connectivist perspective, 2017), Paulo Roberto de Souza Mesquita Junior (collaborative peer learning supported by a social network, 2017), Adelito Farias (human–computer interaction in educational technologies, UFRPE, 2014) and, as co-advisor, Sofia Galvão Lima (technology education in primary and secondary schools, 2013 and 2015).

Higher education in computing and innovation · 2018–2023

The Porto Digital Residency Program has been an extension project since 2018, under Cabral's responsibility; the Center for Teaching in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (a teaching project, 2019–, led by Geber Ramalho) condenses the practice of the Projetão course at UFPE since 2005. The evaluation of the training design was published as a paper: Mercado de trabalho em TI: análise de um experimento de aproximação entre academia e indústria no Porto Digital (IT job market: analysis of an experiment bringing academia and industry closer at Porto Digital), with Marcela Valença, Wellynton Diniz, Mariana Pincovsky and César França (VIII WASHES 2023; doi.org/10.5753/washes.2023.229309).

Public education policy · 2023–2025

Visiting Scholar at the Lemann Center for Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazil, a center of the Stanford Graduate School of Education dedicated to public education policies suited to the Brazilian reality, from September 2023 to August 2024 (profile at the Lemann Center). Since 2025, Cabral has been the lead researcher of the project Preparing Brazil's Youth: Integrating Vocational Training into Schools, of Stanford Impact Labs, with Eric Bettinger and, as partners, the Pernambuco State Department of Education, the Itaú Foundation, CESAR School and the Lemann Center. The project tests two models of vocational education integrated with high school in public schools in Pernambuco, with randomized and quasi-experimental evaluation.

Measuring how students work with AI

Meu Mapa de IA, from FAROL, surveys how Brazilian students work with AI (access, knowledge, what they can do and justify) and returns the aggregate to the AI adoption Observatory: 2,943 responses in the 09/14/2026 snapshot, with suppression of every cell below five. It is described in the line of research on agentic artificial intelligence.

Cecília Cavalieri França; Mychelline Souto Cunha and Liliane Sheyla da Silva Fonseca; Kiev Gama; Yvonne Costa Carvalho and Veronica Teichrieb; Waldcelma Silveira, Renan Lima and Fabio Florencio; Erika Pessoa Araujo, Evandro Natividade and Anuacy Fontes; Marcela Valença, Wellynton Diniz, Mariana Pincovsky and César França; Geber Ramalho.

Continued in: Teaching, the Residência Tecnológica do Porto Digital and the text AI and education.