Aims

Internet is a new means of communication and like all other means of communication, has a great impact on society.
All the sessions of this module analyse different aspects of the Internet and of digital technology. Only by understanding all these aspects is it possible to understand the whole philosophy which lies behind the Internet. All these aspects vave a global impact on human life, changing individuals and their way of understanding reality.
Such a change becomes more evident, the more the tool is used. In present day society, young people use the Internet more then adults and in more different ways. Therefore it is young people who feel these kinds of consequences the most.
The module has a general aim which is the same aim of all the single sessions: making the youth worker aware of:

• the potentiality of digital technology,
• the way youngsters use digital technology,
• the change that digital technology brings to our society and in particular to young people.

The youth worker should not become an expert technician of digital technology but should be a guide for the youngsters. In order to do this the youth worker needs to understand digital technology, testing their tools as an active part.
The relationship between the youth worker and the youngsters is the same as the relationship between the navigator and the driver: the driver knows everything about the car and knows how to get the best performance from the car, the navigator doesn’t know everything about the car but he knows the area where the driver is passing through and knows the threats the driver could come across on his way and suggests how to avoid them to the driver.

This topic is mostly related to the feature of virtuality

When youngsters surf the web they have the possibility to pretend to be someone else completely different from reality. The aim of this exercise is to analyse psychological issues related to multiple identities and to understand the risks and potentialities that youngsters could face on the web; more then this youngsters should understand that what they found on the Internet is not always real.

This exercise foresees one activity: the Creation of a piece of music.

It deals with the relationship between music and digital technology and the consequences for the role of the author. The aim of this exercise is to give youth workers the information about how the digital technology can be used to exploit young people’s creativity. More then this, the aim of the session is to make youth workers understood the importance of the fact that everything found on the Internet can be modified in some way; in this contest a young person could create something new by simply modifying something that already exists and merging it with something else. The importance of this phenomenon is tied not only to the concept of the artist but also to the changes that it can bring about in the mind of youngster.

This exercise foresees one activity: the Creation of a video clip.

It deals with: the relationship between video and digital technology and the consequences for the role of the author. The aim of this exercise is to give youth workers the information about how the digital technology can be used to exploit young people’s creativity. More then this, the aim of the session is to make youth workers understood the importance of the fact that everything found on the Internet can be modified in some way; in this contest a young person could create something new by simply modifying something that already exists and merging it with something else. The importance of this phenomenon is tied not only to the concept of the artist but also to the changes that it can bring about in the mind of youngster.

This exercise foresees one activity: to play with a video game.

The aim of this session is to give youth workers the information about how internet is used by youth to play on-line. This is an other one of the most popular use of Internet: videogames indeed can be played not only against the computer but also against a real person located in some other area of the world. Knowing where to play online and how to do that, will give youth workers a skills which will be very useful not only to assist the youth while playing but also to organise videogames tournament with other youth both at national and trans-national level.