The Role of the New Technologies in the Italian Primary School: Historical and Educational Outlines

Abstract

Education is a process which helps the growth of the students. Thanks to it students can grow,
develop and become adult and qualified persons in different fields of the humans’ activity. Hence,
the school educates only when it supports the students in getting and developing their own skills and
when it helps them to get new attitudes towards themselves as well as the human, natural and
artificial world. In this perspective, the school cannot continue to be a mere teaching-learning
environment, just making frontal lessons, even if with the support of advanced multimedia
technologies, but it should, indeed, focus the attention on the learning processes. This is the deepest
change that the school needs. The possibilities offered by the computers in the educational field are
many, especially as support in special didactics. In this sense, the access to multimedia and
telematics has caused the activation of an autonomous process to build knowledge. The
interpersonal exchanges mediated by the computer can break the isolation of a disabled person. The
introduction of multimedia in school can then enhance both the teacher and the student to help the
cooperative dimension of the teaching / learning process. The school has to open itself to new
technologies and help the students to select the necessary information for the construction of the
knowledge. Hence, it is of paramount importance to highlight the need for an adequate teachinglearning
planning, so that the use of computers won’t be extempore but it will be a suitable support
for the learning process, selecting methods, tools, materials and time together with intervention
strategies. The use of technologies in the elementary school represents a teaching resource, but it
requires the compliance with specific conditions and the use of procedures which can match with the
ministry guidelines and the all the problems related to the delicate phases of growth and
development of the children.