THE USE OF E-BOOKS IN EDUCATION TO IMPROVE LEARNING

The change of communication from oral to chirografique has involved considerable and important changes in psychological and sociological nature (McLuhan, 1967). Writing has turned the thought processes, has expanded communication capabilities (Ong, 1986), has given the start to what the press has then amplified: the separation of the word from immediate present and the reduction of the sound in space. With the press, after more than six hundred years since the birth of Gutenberg, today we are faced with a myriad of technological innovations both in the field of electronic publishing and in the context of the media. The term "ebook" (text in digital format, electronic book) indicate the publication in electronic format, the format in which the digital text is converted and the reader dispositive of e-text. Thanks to ebooks we have found a solution to the problem of preservation and dissemination of content, a new opportunity to redefine the relationship between author, reader, editor (Jenkins, 2006), an opportunity to revive the idea of universal and unconditional access to the knowledge, the ability to access through the internet to open virtual library where users have an active role and become the place to interact, collaborate, build new shared meanings (Soojung-Kim, 1998; Siemens, 2005).
In Italy, starting from the 2009/2010 school year, the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research has sponsored Digital School Plan in order to modify learning environments thanks to the widespread introduction of technologies in support of teaching (in particular through the use of interactive whiteboard and the ebook). The research presented in this paper starts from this frame of reference. With the research we wanted to determine whether the use of eooks in schools has resulted in an improvement in terms of the training organization and motivation of the students. The objectives of the research were those to provide an answer to the following questions: does the introduction of ebooks cause a value-added design of multimedia content? Does the use of the ebook promote pupils ' motivation for learning?
In the search 11 teachers (primary school and secondary school grade) and 89 students (68 of 11 years attending the first class of the secondary school of first instance and 21 of 9 years attending the fourth class of primary school) were involved. Two different questionnaires were administered to educators in order to acquire the information consistent with the objectives of the research and the results have corroborated the initial hypothesis. The use of the ebook has positive influence on the design of teaching activities mainly geared to encourage interactivity on the one hand between the individual student and the contents of knowledge and, on the other hand, to facilitate the interaction between the pupils themselves. We should also verify how students ' motivation is greatly improved with positive repercussions in terms of quality of learning.