Teaching and learning with ICT in classroom: findings from an Italian experience

In which ways ICTs are effectively used in the classroom by teachers and students? For which purposes? At what extend their could change teaching and learning experience? These are the main questions that the paper aims to answer in order to identify several models of innovation in educational systems. To reach these purposes, the paper presents “Cl@ssi 2.0” project, launched within the wider “National Plan Digital School” by the Italian Ministry of Education in 2009 and lasted three years. The project has proposed to finance the set up of technologically advanced classes (called Cl@ssi 2.0) in the secondary school in order to create teaching and learning environments suitable for constant and diffused use of technology in everyday school life and to verify, at the end of three years, which impact may occur on educational processes. The paper focuses on data collected from logbooks, a monitoring quali-quantitative instrument, administered online in each of three years, trough which Cl@ssi 2.0’ s teachers have reported their personal experiences, describing the use of ICT in classroom and expressing opinions and judgments on their impact on teaching and learning processes. The longitudinal analysis provides documentary evidence of the evolution of the project allowing to identify if, and in which way, the continuous use of technologies has produced different results in comparison with the first steps of the project. The paper focuses particularly on the impact of ICT on three dimensions strictly related each others: 1) teaching styles and practices; 2) classroom climate and relationship between teachers and students as well among peers; 3) students’ learning modalities and achievements. The essay ends underlining that, besides the presence of ICT in classroom is an important condition to activate some changes in “traditional” ways in which teaching and learning processes have occurred, nevertheless it isn’t sufficient to produce alone a real innovation in schools. Such innovation’s potential derived by technology, in fact, requires to take into account also organizational and institutional dimensions as well to carefully consider features and attitudes of involved teachers and students.