Our secondary school ”Dante Alighieri” is located in Spoleto, a little but very nice medieval city in the centre of Italy near Perugia (60 km.) and Terni (28 km.). Spoleto is famous in the world for the ”Festival of two worlds” which is a World Wide attraction that involves music, dance and theatre scene.
In our school there are 17 classes (5 forms completed more two classes) with pupils from 11 to 13 years old. Our school is very big. There are many and richer laboratories: for arts, for foreign languages, for sciences, for multimedia, for videos, for seeing cd-rom, for sports and a library. There is also a big room “aula magna” for conferences. Around the school there is a large garden with secular trees. We have one headmaster and 34 teachers and two native-teachers for Spanish and Dutch languages. Our pupils learn English and French in the morning and Spanish and Dutch (if they choose) in the p.m. After the school they return for theatre, music choir and sports. In our school, every year, there are the “Math games” with the help of Bocconi University. We have a multimedia laboratory with 19 Pentium II-III with router for Internet and a local net for lessons. We have also two sedes in Baiano (6 Km) (two forms) and in Campello on Clitunno (one form) (13 Km). Our school is a test center for the European computer driving (ECDL).

1. Laboratories

In our school there is a multimedia laboratory with 18 Pentium and a server with router for internet, a local net (IDNET) for lessons and a net for sharing files. There is, also, a video room with a Pentium II with Internet and a maxi-monitor to watch cdrom or videos with the pupils; an Art classroom with a Pentium III with one printer, one scanner and graphic-software for shows and multimedia presentations; a new equipped Science laboratory with a Pentium III for electronic data processing; a Gym room with a Pentium I to league standing; a Library with a Pentium I in the net, by Internet, with other  schools in Spoleto for a project about libraries called “Bibliomedia”. Thank to this project you can research 7.000 books by author or by title; an administrator office with 4 Pc: two in the net with our ministry (SISSI) and two for database (pupils, families, teachers….); the headmaster’s office with a Pentium I for his personal documents. Other electronic resources are: printers, scanners, cd-creators, a webcamera and a photocamera. Then there are two multimedia laboratories with Internet in the other two sites of the school.

Our multimedia laboratory is used:

• By the net for sharing files to produce web projects. The philosophy of these projects is “Learning while Teaching” and these projects are a resource for web community.
• By the local net to teach the use of computer and the use of some Office programs (word, frontpage, publisher, power point outlook) and some animation programs (flash). In the afternoon there are lessons for ECDL (our school is a Test Center)
• By Internet, to produce, in the school web site, services for families and for students-there is the possibility, by a user id and by a password, for the parents to know school information about their children and there is for the students a web site about school subjects for their researches and for their studying.

Internet is used also to comunicate by e-mail, to update the school web site, to publish on line our web projects.

Dream room: Computers in the classrooms in the net with boys around the world. All with an only thought: to learn in peace and in collaboration. Stop with a static cultures: the past in the future. That’s enough heavy rucksacks! ….but where is the money?