Using ICT to implement learning as a problem solving activity

At present, learning is no longer limited to be a school activity, but is more and more necessary at any stage in life; this means that people must be able to learn autonomously, effectively and efficiently. This is not a trivial task, since few people have innately this ability, which thus should be explicitly taught and included in school curricula. Learning to learn entails becoming able to make use of methodologies and experiences and to adapt them as necessary, to tackle new learning situations by re-organising one's own knowledge according to new objectives and by setting out collaborative relationships. These considerations led us to sketch a model of learning as a problem solving activity, and to analyse which tools can support and favour a fruitful implementation of our model. Problem solving is essentially based on three processes: problem understanding, detection of means to build a solution, construction of a solution strategy. An analysis of the abilities and activities entailed by our approach shows that ICT offers the possibility to implement it straightforwardly and effectively. In this paper we describe the main aspects of our model and illustrate them by means of some examples from an experimentation we carried out.