The continuous conflict between a theoretical and a more practical approach in teaching has been the core of interesting debates for years. With no difficulty we can assert that effective tuition is the necessary selection of practical initiatives, into which the student can express the level of competences acquired, through the learned proceeding of good teachers and careful educators.
It might sound obvious to assert that we are surrounded by several contrasts regulating our life, such as night and day and the connected darkness and light as well as our reality as male and female evolving into man and woman. Moreover we live according to principles but we face our daily reality and around us science appears as opposed to technology. Contrasts are, then, only apparently in conflict. They represent the different aspects of the whole articulate reality as it is the case with theory and practice.
Teachers, who are to be educators at the same time, know quite well how difficult it is to insert enough practice into the procedures of the learning process, without reducing too much the leading principles, through which the ability shown during an activity is heightened to actual competence. It is becoming clearer and clearer that ‘both sides’ must be neither underevaluated nor denied. In fact they have been recognized as complementary and, therefore, necessary.
The percentage makes the difference being likely to determine dangerous unbalance in tuition, due not to incompetence of the teachers, but to the social pressure of those who still perceive manual work as less relevant or more degrading than the intellectual one. We are lucky as we can organize tuition with the help of ICT that has already spread out its presence, even if there are still wide areas in which there is no trace of its presence.
The main reason is financial resources but, not so rarely, also a kind of stern rejection of these apparently intrusive and presumptuous new technologies.
PC in particular can’t be dismissed simply as a tool, like a hammer or a spade. ‘Artificial intelligence’ is its area. It has been compared to a special characteristics normally attributed mainly to the human species and in spite of all the negative nicknames given to it, such as ‘a very quick idiot’, it plays quite a relevant role in our society.. It is a tool and a very ‘noble’ one, which cannot be refused so easily, as it offers endless opportunities to those who adopt it. Moreover, it is ‘clean’ and through energy, it gives actual energy. It is ‘alive’, it has already a ‘life’ of its own, when we contact it, and of a special kind as we can shape it, giving meanings, always different, higher, apparently without limit.
This new tool is the key to new educational achievements as it represents a relevant enlargement of our faculties in a world that keeps hurrying, as it is ‘practical’ without the disadvantages of now obsolete tools and challenging as you can’t use it without learning some basic aspects of its ‘personality’.
Moreover, it has been creeping in as a toy you can spend your time with, having fun, showing concepts through real images and sounds, not papers and drawings. A keyboard instead of a pen is no scandal, it is only going onwards, using what has been invented by people with unusual ability. We must exploit this very flexible means that allows articulate solutions, thus helping our students acquire new competences with more pleasure and less effort.
Looking backwards we can detect a persisting line in our common past. In fact what is new always gives us a thrill and some fear at first, comfort and relaxation a little further .Therefore, as children consider PC part of their life it can and it must be exploited without being afraid of lowering the level of their competences. Instead, such a tool can enlarge and reinforce them avoiding the resistance that students connect to the idea of studying.
