Abstract
The introduction of ICT in contemporary society, with particular reference to the dimensions of education, it is highly problematic because it has both positive aspects of qualification of learning and socialization, and may embed possible drift towards a technocratic and reproductive direction. In particular, the most important innovations currently ongoing in schools about the use of ICT focus on the following areas: - the relationship between school and territory in the context of an integrated training system that can enhance the knowledge gained by students in their living and learning context, and to educate them to an effective citizenship education; - the relation with family, in order to achieve an efficient exchange of information, through the construction permanent environments for ongoing debates on the issues of education, and to promote forms of “solidarity”; - the stimulation of metacognitive learning through the promotion of meaningful reflection on learning experiences so to empower in learners cultural management competencies, to become aware of the progressive development of their knowledge and skills; - the promotion of a socio-constructivist learning approach, with a special emphasis on the social forms of knowledge construction, that supports teaching methods overcoming a mere instrumental conception of group-work; to open the scenarios of cooperative learning and of all the possible forms of peer education using the new applications of social networking as a support for this; - The twinning among schools and the at-distance cooperation, as an answer to issues of globalization versus localization existing in our contemporary culture; a clash which demand us to work for educating students who will be able to deal with far different realities, to present their messages in a competent way, understanding others’ messages, accepting any form of critical crossbreeding of their own culture; - the support to a “school of inclusion” that succeeds in meeting the challenge of new and old diversities by creating an educational environment that can dialectically respond to the opposed rights of equality and diversity, designing teaching methods able to ensure to all learners both pathways of shared knowledge acquisition, essential for the integration into society, and educational experiences tailored on specific motivations, resources, and cultural views; - the interdisciplinary learning that fosters an approach open to the complexity of cultural problems, in their being, always, the meeting point between different disciplinary approaches in order to produce significant holistic learning experiences in which the learning contents are approached in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary way; - the management of assessment and remedial interventions and the essential formative role of assessment: it need to be, in other words, an instrument for the detection of problems and an attempt to resolve them through appropriate actions based on individualized support.