Report on Paolo Ferri's speech "The impact of the digital revolution and new communication technologies on epistemological paradigms and on teaching and training practices".
Today's Italian students, mostly "digital natives", cross the boundaries of two temporally different worlds every day: on the one hand, highly interactive and connected living environments that currently use digital code; on the other hand, learning environments that are still predominantly linked to alphabetical code. Paolo Ferri draws attention to the centrality of didactics and its new content as a re-evaluation of "learning through doing" that can finally become accessible to all.
The impact of the digital revolution and new communication technologies on epistemological paradigms and on teaching and training practices. This is the title that Paolo Ferri chose for his speech at the conference in Piacenza. Several aspects were examined, which I will try to summarize.
THE STATE OF THE "DIGITAL REVOLUTION" IN THE ITALIAN SCHOOL.
In our country, the digital revolution in schools is lagging behind, perhaps just at the beginning, and not because of a poor propensity of the population to use these technologies (the connection data of the population in secondary school age are quite similar to those in the United States), but for a structural problem: the almost total absence of fiber optic cabling in public buildings. It has been pointed out that, contrary to the United States and Germany, for example, we have not been able to use auctions for concessions to mobile phone companies to obtain optical fiber in public buildings, let alone in schools. The result is there for all to see: only 7% of the classes are connected, and not necessarily broadband.
Nor does the gap seem likely to be resolved in the near future. Calls for proposals such as the recent "web generation" and interventions promoted at various levels by public administrations continue to focus only on the purchase of "machines" (devices: tablets, notebooks, computers), neglecting on the one hand the necessary infrastructure, on the other hand the training of teachers, with the result of directing the already scarce resources on what is less needed. The device is useless if there is no network. The "machines", on the other hand, are already there: just ask the children to bring them from home.
ON THE WAY FROM HOME TO SCHOOL A LEAP BACK 30 YEARS.
The school's current paradox is this. The children who attend it (at least those from kindergarten to middle school) are now "digital natives", meaning by this definition all those who, born from about 2000 onwards, do not remember the arrival of the Internet at home.
They are children and young people who have a large number of interactive screens at home (screens, not computers, which are already old tools, used by parents for work) and the possibility of connections, from the mobile phone onwards. Children who, in the 6-700 meters that on average separate the house from the school, make a journey back in the time of 30-35 years.
to be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d878dc58d5b5f00ad32ca96/the-impact-of-the-digital-revolution-and-new-communication-technologies-part-2-5d8f7b7523bf4800ae3a9a3f