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Day of Formation to Communication
24/3/2008 - Rome (Italy)
This was the aim of the study and reflection day in which 110 students of the four communities that depend on Mother General (Auxilium, Casa Canta, Casa Valsé, Casa Generalizia) took part on March 17th. The aim was reached through moments of listening, group sharing and assembly.
They started from the fact that often we do not know the complexity of the Internet, with all its potential and risks. Consequently we do not fully understand the ways in which young people express themselves in blogs, in ning, why they access Second Life, the meaning of the music they download from the Net through eMule, listen to and share with their friends on their iPods. What can, perhaps, scare us is the rapidity with which the new communications technologies evolve and change, the ease with which they can be used and the all-prevasiveness the Net has assumed in the life of the very young and of people. And that is not all.
We note, on the one hand the fascination of the Net and the opportunities it offers to religious life, but we are also aware that, if it is not approached from an educational perspective, not only do we not know how to educate young people, but we risk becoming ‘shipwrecked’ rather that navigators and companions to young people on their journey and in their life.
The initial input by Sr. Giuseppina Teruggi, General Councillor for Social Communications, presented a Salesian reading of the challenges that the communications culture poses for education. She also revisited the lives of Don Bosco and Maria Domenica Mazzarello as wise communicators for the good of the young. This was followed by two different workshops, co-ordinated Sr. Maria Antonia Chinello and Sr. Enrica Ottone, a lecturer at the Auxilium Faculty, and by Sr. Anna Rita Cristaino and Sr. Lucy Roces of the Social Communications Sector. In them the Sisters were able to reflect on the demands made by the choice of networking in education: using the mind, heart and will. They were also led to reflect on the implications and consequences of the diffusion of the Internet and to identify criteria that will allow one, in the face of the accumulation of risults, to search for information and content on the Net. An exploration of the different expressions of the more specifically social dimensions of virtual environments helped them to grasp the lines of convergence, continuity and rapid innovation.
The convictions that the group reached and shared in the closing assembly and, in particualr, the open questions, showed how urgently it is to develop programmes of formation and self-formation to the new technologies; to listen to young people and know their language; to collaborate with the laity in order to strengthen educational processes and involve the family. The hypothesis for future programmes should reveal the value of the journey that has been started: to move from the consumption of the media to the educational use of communication mediated by the new technologies. How to do this is for the future.
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