The "Net" in education: some operative examples

The Internet has become an invaluable resource in teaching and learning activities, within both academic and non-academic organisations. It can be used to conduct research, seek out information for course preparation, deliver courses and facilitate communication between students and teaching staff. This paper presents two different experiments which involved the Internet in educational paths in a high school and a university. In the first experiment, named the Web Learning Environment (WLE), we studied the use of the Internet and its resources to develop a new learning environment. We involved a classroom (16 students, aged 16-17) in a technical institute in Italy, specialising in information technologies. The project was divided into six different phases: knowledge of the Internet, research using the Internet, access to FTP, didactics with the Internet, communication using the Net, and the creation of cooperative hypertext dedicated to Bonaventura Cavalieri (an Italian mathematician). The second experiment, named "Cybermath", was an attempt to build some hypermedia modules to introduce mathematics to students. It was developed at the Academy of Architecture of Mendrisio (part of the University of Italian Switzerland), in Switzerland.