Programme

Exercise 1: Internet and Personal Identity

This exercise foresees three activities:

1. Avatar
2. Virtual socialisation
3. Virtual community

During these three activities the participants: 1) create their own avatar (the avatar is the software representation of a person as the person appears to others in a shared virtual universe); 2) visit a virtual world; 3) surf a virtual community.

This topic is mostly related to the feature of interaction.
Internet facilitates and allows for the sharing of a digital form of knowledge. For the very first time the knowledge can be edited.
The negative consequence is that there is no certification of the knowledge; this has led to the diminishing of the concept of the author and to the development of a sense of independence from authority .
The positive consequence is that all individuals are able to share and exchange their skills.

This topic is mostly related to the feature of interaction.
Internet facilitates and allows for the sharing of a digital form of knowledge. For the very first time the knowledge can be edited.
The negative consequence is that there is no certification of the knowledge; this has led to the diminishing of the concept of the author and to the development of a sense of independence from authority.
The positive consequence is that all individuals are able to share and exchange their skills.

This topic is mostly related to the feature of simulation.
On the web “experience� is simulation. Simulation allows you to imitate and study reality. It is probable that in the future, education will be simulated: we will pretend to be historical personages or we will be able to try physics experiments).
A classical example of simulation is videogames. This kind of experience has both negative and positive aspects. A big risk is alienation from reality; on the other hand this kind of experience is a learning methodology and the psychological gratification you get from a virtual achievement is similar to a real one.