A walk in the past.
Virtual reality in the teaching of the humanities
Technological research outlines new horizons in which it is possible to insert a targeted didactic, designed thanks to the intersection of different disciplines. Digital storytelling, serious games, augmented or virtual reality is incredible means to undertake multidisciplinary educational paths aimed at creating skills and knowledge in accordance with the lives of children and adolescents in today's society. The key to the effective implementation of innovative models of teaching is interdisciplinarity, a crossroads of knowledge that is an essential step for the creation of new skills, not only for those who learn but also for those who teach. The Percro (Laboratory of Perceptive Robotics) of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, among other things, has been dealing for years with the relationship between technological research and its possible applications in the area of cultural heritage and education, providing examples and developing projects within schools in the area.
New solicitations of technological research
In the school of a few years ago, only the best teachers, assisted by the highest literature and the best historiography, could create suggestions such as to stimulate the imagination and make plausible scenarios of reconstruction of the past, all seasoned with careful individual readings and deep reflection by the children. But these processes are increasingly difficult if we consider the recent and radical change in society, in schools and in the teaching profession itself. The advent of technology has contributed to making the relationship between learners, but also teachers, with the disciplines even more complex, calling on the latter to take note of it in an increasingly stringent manner. The need to deal with the web, the progressive reduction of the threshold of attention in children accustomed to languages other than traditional ones, are just some of the aspects of a major problem, which opens a binding question among those involved in education.
On the other hand, the new applications of information technology for teaching offer a very wide and diversified panorama, which only a few decades ago would have seemed like science fiction literature.
Possible scenarios of virtual reality
Imagine walking through the past to discover how a square, an alley, a monument were displayed in a distant era: such as colours, voices, sounds, trades, animals, plants, materials, lights and shadows, so equal and so different from our daily lives, appear to be a very suggestive educational experience, if they are part of a well-defined didactic programme, supported by an adequate cognitive path, not disjointed by an appropriate and skilful laboratory use of sources, accompanied also by readings and reflections.
In fact, both the virtual reconstruction of environments and the digital storytelling1 or the use of serious games2, which the most up-to-date scientific research makes available to the world of education and cultural heritage in general, is an excellent vehicle for transferring knowledge in an immediate way, through a simpler and more accessible approach: visual, auditory, tactile and in any case interactive, which replaces the most complex forms of a highly specialized language such as that of the scientific disciplines.
Obviously, all this is only apparently simple, because it hides the need, in reality, a profitable and beneficial opportunity, for the crossroads of countless different skills from the most varied disciplines.
The Laboratory of Perceptive Robotics (Percro) and the school
A good opportunity to access the virtual world and accompany it to a renewed didactic born from a serious reflection is provided by the team of researchers directed by Professor Massimo Bergamasco of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, engaged for years in a specific field such as robotics and the creation of virtual environments within the Laboratory of Perceptive Robotics (Percro).
At the Istituto Storico Grosseto Della Resistenza e dell'età contemporanea a group of teachers met some researchers from the Bergamasco team, such as Chiara Evangelista and Marcello Carrozzino, who deal with the relationship between this advanced research and its possible applications in the area of cultural heritage and teaching. This has been possible thanks to the ten-year relations of ISGREC with the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, thanks to shared works (study on the analysis and socioeconomic prospects of the Maremma conducted in 2009) and continuous contacts with the professors and researchers of the Istituto Pisano.
Investigating the relationship between the most advanced technology and the historical disciplines is a unique opportunity to really think about the many possible ways of communicating the contents of Public History, so difficult to transmit scientifically correct to the younger generations accustomed to often uncritical use of the contents of the network.
to be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d878dc58d5b5f00ad32ca96/a-walk-in-the-past-part-2-5d90b12979c26e00aea3f979