50th Anniversary Conference

The last twenty years have been a period of unprecedented technological evolution, both in terms of the extent and of the acceleration of the changes brought about. Digital technology brings new services everyday, increases mobility, and spearheads unprecedented liberalization and competition, with the impact of ICT extending well beyond the economic domain. Computers are now widespread in homes after having been integrated in the workplace with broadband connections allowing truly interactive multimedia communication. The effective and potential impact of converging information and communication digital technologies has permeated every sector of society: economic, social, political and cultural. With broadband access and wireless connections, Internet is becoming a “cultural crossroad of work, play and social interaction” (Marriott, 2006). Digital technology is overcoming barriers of time and space in ways no other technology had made possible before. The very texture of social life and cultural identities is being re-woven by those who have access to the technology and by rapidly emerging innovative, even if at times questionable, new social goals, interests and networks such as MySpace or SecondLife. Although computers have been present in classrooms for the last twenty five years, it is only with the generalised user friendly access to the Internet, in the mid ‘90s, that the majority of schools and universities have begun, not only to feel the pressure to use ICT, but more importantly to develop specific, innovative and productive educational uses of ICT. Nevertheless, as communication behaviours evolve, as information access widens and societies try to implement e-democracy with IC technologies, new perspectives on information and knowledge are disrupting traditional academic perspectives. These issues will be developed in reference to the analysis, done within a European research project, of ten national Frameworks for integration of ICT in education, and to the results of a survey preceded by observations and interviews, and done with nearly 600 university students, in the first months of 2006, about their use of digital tools in their university work