Inclusive Education and ICT: Reflecting on Tools and Methods

This paper looks at the issue of e-inclusion in the field of school education. It aims at shedding light on the potential that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offers to avoid any kind of discrimination between students. The basic idea underpinning the paper is that the process of school inclusion can be fostered by means of new technological tools only if, in parallel, educational approaches, methods and strategies are conveniently revised and improved. Taking the viewpoint of both educational tools and methods, the paper addresses the key issues of the "accessibility" of educational tools and of the "new competences" required by teachers. In order to build up a genuinely inclusive classroom on the one hand it is necessary for mainstream educational tools (including the ICT-based ones) to be barrier-free and fully accessible to all students, and, on the other, for teachers to have the competences to carefully select e-tools and plan/make a good use of them.