Globalization, Education, Information and Communication Technologies: What Relationships and Reciprocal Influences?

Globalization – described as a structural phenomenon of increasing interdependence among various parts of the world, for which the effects of an action feel at a distance has produced a variety of economic, cultural, and social changes that have shaped the world over the past 50 years. Without doubt this process was favoured by development and pervasiveness of digital technologies, that make the communications faster and the information more easily sharable. Globalization has had a relevant impact also in the educational field: the convergence of models of educational organizations, the internationalisation of key competencies definition and the diffusion of large-scale assessment of student's performance (PISA-OECD), are only a few of more relevant aspects of this process.This paper aims to explore the main features of globalization in education with a particular focus on role played by the new information and communication technologies (ICT). For this purpose will be used different approaches and heterogenic sources (national and international statistics and laws) and will be made a large review of sociological literature on these topics.In a globalized world characterized by a convergence culture, school systems should work in order to integrate ICT in ordinary learning processes, that means: to give new competencies and skills, to experiment new didactic models based on social media and web 2.0 tools, to contribute to the construction of a new digital literacy directed at the critical uses of digital media, in order to understand how the technologies work, and how they may affect our global life