by Roberto Cuccu, Editor
We have chosen to pubblish most of our feature articles in the form of an edited transcript of a virtual roundtable. During these chatting sessions people who most of the times had never met phisically before shared and discussed about educational and artistic issues related to virtual worlds. The form chosen should also convey to the reader a flavour of participation in a friendly conversation among fellow travellers.
In the interview with Franz Fischnaller, the Italian born 3D artist and designer comments on his major virtual reality works, and communicates his deep personal involvement in the creation of new forms of art and culture.
The roundtable with Mario Rotta and the one with Cinzia Gandini were
organized by myself during an in-house teacher training workshop. The
partipants had the opportunity to experience first hand how to partecipate
in a chat session set in a 3D virtual environment and at the same time
to interact with a distant expert on some issues we had been discussing
in presence.
Both Mario and Cinzia's expertise and savoir-faire have proved also this
time to be up at the expectations of the participants.
Grazia Cesarini and Maurizio Bracardi have been the other two founders
of the group of educational 3D researchers known as Mondo di Fantasia
(World of Fantasia). We met and began to use in a different way the Net
to make people learn and started our first steps in researching educational
games in 3D Active Worlds thanks to Mario Rotta, our tutor during an online
course on new ways to learn on line held at University of Florence.
In their transcript Grazia and Maurizio discuss their experience as online
tutors in a course for librarians.
Maurizio reports also his experience in a European Scool Exchange Project set in the 3D world he administers.
In every issue of this magazine we'll give practical hints and inspiring materials for educators interested in the use of new tecnologies in education.
The lesson plan on Multiple Intelligencies and New Tecnologies has already
won several awards for having achieved a real crative integration of ICT
in the everyday classroom activities. The plan was originally designed
to overcome some learning difficulties in a classroom on mine.
Digital Stories is an introduction to how to tell stories using new tecnologies.
We hope that the materials discussed in this first contribute could be
of interest to most of the readers.
Our uppermost hope for the future of this initiative is to receive the contribuition of new ideas, knowledge and experiences from the vast community of educators (and not only them ) that have at heart the development of new forms of learning.
Roberto Cuccu
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