TWO_After the visit.

Online use, web authentication, memorizing activities, interaction
Student

At the Officina Emilia exhibition I could not play any of the "video games? because that stupid Francesca had glued herself to the screen and stole my card so that she could continue playing on my behalf. The lady at the exhibition said we could try it at home, so tonight, since nothing interesting is happening on Facebook, I'm trying to browse.

I enter the address that's on the card, I open the site and I am asked for my username and password. Wait. We had to come up with them at school, when the teacher got us to pre-register on the website using the classroom computer. My username is my usual "Zargon?, and the password is also the usual. But I do not write it here. I do not even tell Ely, who is to my girlfriend.

Ok, I entered. The website says: "Hello Riccardo!?. The workspace is already populated with some activities that have been carried out, these are those that I have seen Francesca do during the visit, in my name. I browse and reopen the activity called "Network of stories? and I find the situation that Francy left, with a movie about robots that paint cars. I also click around a bit. By the way here you should use the mouse and not the touchscreen, but it?s the same thing. However I am not going to describe it for you, as you know already.

The novelty is that when I return to the workspace I also find some activities that were closed when we were at the exhibition, but that now you can do. I choose one that is called "From the war to formula 1?. When I enter in the activity I see some symbols arranged on two levels: those closest are similar to those of the "Network of stories?, there are still photos and writings that talk about Emilia-Romagna and its workshops, but behind them there are photos of Italian events and the page is marked with the numbers of years starting from 1945 and looking to the right I see that they continue, but I can read only until 1950. Looking closer I see that all the symbols have dates and that they are arranged in chronological order, ie, their horizontal position depends on their date: the "oldest" are to the left of the more "modern" ones.

In practice the screen is organized on three "bars": one with the list of the years, one with the events of Modena and one with the history of all of Italy. If I click on any of these bars I see that I can make it slide. When I move one of the bars, after a while everything else is moving too: the other bars follow with a little delay, as if they were tied to it with a spring. When I let go of the bar or if I pause while it is sliding, after a while the other bars line up and "fit" into place. Some of the symbols can be clicked and enlarged, opening a window that covers the remainder of the screen. In the window there are movies or texts or pictures with an audio commentary, for example in the history strip there are a few songs next to different years or photos of historical facts and trends: there is a girl dressed just like my mother in a picture that my dad keeps on his desk. In the same way, the symbols in the Modena strip link to events related to Officina Emilia issues: the development of machining and local industry in our territory.

While looking at symbols I notice another thing: in some there is a small drawing that looks like the usual "user group? icon. I move the cursor over one of these special symbols: it appears to be an interview, judging by the image that opens and by the title "Immigrants tell their stories - a graduate in the foundry?. In addition to standard preview information, it also says "Immigration Project 2009 - ITIS Corni / prof. Ramella?.

I must confess that it makes me breathe a sigh of relief. Because I begin to understand what Ramella had in mind when the other day she said: "Fifth graders in section F will soon make a very interesting piece of research work" and all of us, distinguished members of that class, shuddered to think of another one of those exercises that ended up with an avalanche of E grades.