EDUCATING TOGETHER IN THE DIGITAL AGE: AN ALLIANCE BETWEEN PARENTS AND TEACHERS

Abstract

We find ourselves in a real cultural revolution. The digital revolution that occurred
in recent decades has led to the spread of new instruments that have rapidly
spread at the global level. These rapidly accelerated changes have influenced
lifestyles, communication, socialization, study, posing new educative and
scholastic challenges and in particular reference to the relationship between
parents and children and between teachers and students.The new media are
regarded as a great invention. They are valuable instruments that offer many
opportunities to learn, retrieve information, discover games, contact friends,
make purchases and dialogue with people. But educators (parents, teachers) find
themselves in a situation of having to step up and educate their children/students
(digital natives) who often use tools unknown to them and use them in the most
natural, fast and spontaneous way. Very often it happens that the children
discover these programmes and instruments without anyone explaining to them
the dangers and potentials or without anyone regulating their exploration and
use of them. On the contrary, it happens that the children explain to their
parents how to use them. We retain that parents and teachers in the first place
must not necessarily provide the technical or computer skills, but rather give the
psycho-pedagogical indications to support their daily action in raising
children/students: being an agile guide that helps particularly in having a
careful look not only on risks but also on the potentials that digital media offer.
This idea is to encourage a critical and informed use. So the first educational
challenge becomes knowing how to educate to the rules, to affectivity, to being
critical and to being responsible.