New and Old Technologies: a Suitable Combination for Obtaining Efficient Educational Results

The daily use of sophisticated technologies and devices could hide the physical meaning of everyday observations on natural phenomena. The technological solutions continuously proposed by the market, also for the teaching applications, are more and more sophisticated. The result is that more time is actually spent on the learning of the tools than in exploiting the didactic content that may be contained in the programs themselves. The aim of this paper is to show how a comparative analysis of "old" and "current" techniques, applied to the same problem, could allow to study in depth its scientific contents and to highlight both the development and the methods of scientific thought. Two different cases are considered here: a simple analogue mechanic system for introducing students to non-linear systems and the use of the dark room meridian. Both papers were presented at the Second and Third International Workshops "Developing Creativity and Broad Mental Outlook in the Computer Age" (CBMO-2002 and CBMO-2006) in conjunction with the 8th and10th Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas - ISSEI 2002 (Aberystwyth, University of Wales, 22-27 July 2002) and ISSEI 2006 (University of Malta, July 24 - 29, 2006).