Maybe there is nothing in recent years that has had such an impact on the lives of young people as new technologies: the way in which people communicate and relate to one another has been radically transformed, and this change – which, among other things, favors the possibility of sharing in new and creative ways much more profound aspects than may at first appear – represents an opportunity to which schools cannot and must not remain indifferent. On the one hand, in fact, technology helps to broaden the boundaries of one’s own reality; on the other, it can be a valuable ally in improving learning and the ability to educate young people to meet the challenges of an increasingly global world. Precisely in the difficult experience of COVID, technologies have allowed us to continue to see each other and communicate, to break the isolation, even if we are each closed in our own home.

The Covid-19 experience was, even for the school and all its components, a difficult time. Yet, during this period it continued its course, activating distance learning, born more from a generous reaction and the immediate awakening of a strong educational consciousness than from careful planning. We have also discovered that technology alone is not automatically a guarantee of interactivity and involvement, but can, indeed, paradoxically, fall into greater transmissiveness.

It is certain that this time of crisis has put the whole world of school again and more than ever in contact with the digital, forced to a real “revolution”, with forced “steps forward” and deep reflections on its use and effectiveness in teaching.

Designing the future, we wish to continue the reflection on digital education, beyond the logic of emergency imposed by COVID, but also strengthened by our experience, by what we have experienced and what we have learned.

From the experience of the pandemic we have also learned that more than new tools to use, digital technologies configure a new environment in which we are – more or less consciously – constantly immersed and in which we live. For schools, this environment can also be a learning environment, that is, an environment that makes possible and facilitates a new learning experience, broader and more articulated than the traditional one.

In our schools, therefore, technology plays and will continue to play an important role in active learning: starting from the experience of the students and their language, stimulating curiosity and interest, allowing students to interact more with teachers and with each other in the construction of the contents of a lesson, giving them the opportunity to internalize in a personal and creative way the contents learned, creating products that can be inserted into wider communication circuits. Technology helps us to ensure that knowledge is not received as a set of notions, but is born of an experience that can be reflected upon and ultimately lead to action, because our purpose – the meaning, that is, of the entire educational effort that Jesuits have been investing in schools for about 500 years – is always that of forming men and women who are protagonists of their own time, capable of making the world more human and more just.

The network of Italian schools linked to the Jesuits has been investing in this field since 2007, when the so-called ITAS-GE (Information Technology At School – Jesuit Education) project was launched. We brought interactive whiteboards, computers, video projectors and internet connection to every classroom; we trained teachers in the use of the interactive whiteboard; we set up a group of teachers in each school, with specific skills, to animate the process. In this process we discovered how much technology can expand the potential of teaching, enriching both students and teachers themselves and enhancing the personal and relational approach.

Several years have passed since then, but we are still convinced that only with an infrastructure designed specifically for the world of education is it possible to transform technology into a real resource at the service of school life: thus, in our schools, the implementation of the infrastructure is constantly improving. Every classroom is equipped with interactive whiteboard, PC and video projector; Wi-Fi connection and portability of devices – in almost all of our schools, for years now, we have been using tablets for teaching, with the use of students’ personal devices (or those provided by the school) as new learning opportunities – improve school organization and, in particular, broaden the possibilities of teaching; sharing, communication and common work platforms change the relationships between people, encouraging the construction of new content.

Technology is also present in curricular courses, which in many contexts are now enriched by the acquisition of programming/coding skills (Scratch, Arduino, 3D printing, robotics) and by a reflection on media education. More and more, also with the help of experts, we bring students to think about technologies in their impact with everyday life, to guide them towards conscious decisions in the use of tools.

In many of our schools, technology is concretely put at the service of others and society, such as the Crowd4Africa project at the Massimo Institute in Rome and other laboratories where, through coding, robotics, 3D printing and other technologies, socially useful products and projects are created.

Finally, thanks to technology, there are more and more contacts and connections among our schools: both in the Italian network and in the European and global ones. These are opportunities to meet (hangouts between institutions that we have often used for moments of sharing, spiritual reflection or even musical competitions among students), to plan (cultural exchanges or joint projects, whose work is prepared through the use of technology) or disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning (twinning between parallel classes of different schools).

In addition to the way of learning, of course, technology also changes the way of teaching: our teachers, even more so after the experience of COVID, are therefore still involved in research and training activities, both technical and pedagogical, to support them in a process of didactic planning that, using the potential offered by technology, can best develop disciplinary, transversal and value competences. In the schools of the Jesuit Education Foundation, in fact, the reflection on technologies and their integration in disciplinary teaching, in the curriculum, in support of internationality and pastoral care is constant.