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

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.