The impact of new technologies on education and learning mechanisms

The panel is meant to explore the impact of new technologies on education, and specifically on the learning mechanisms. The development of digital technologies is giving rise to new, hitherto unexplored opportunities of interaction at a distance, exploration of virtual environments, and broad access to information. The proposed workshop has its starting point in the widely diffused interrogation about the usefulness and most effective means of introducing new technologies into education, at both the formal and informal levels. There are many possible scenarios for this mutation, with widely differing potentialities and side-effects: technology is not good per se and it is important to identify the scenarios, positive and negative, that are enabled by technology.

It is important that the pedagogical reflection on new technologies and scenarios for the school and learning of the future be grounded on evidence, and not on mere beliefs and intuitions. The panel will present a systematic approach to the evidence concerning the introduction of new technologies in education. The aim of the panel does not consist in promoting ICT for education, or one pedagogical approach against another, but in informing and discussing about the possible and desirable scenarios, and the most promising research directions.