VIRTUAL MUSEUMS AND LEARNING INNOVATION

The paper puts forward the idea that Virtual Museums (VMs) can effectively support learning innovation. In the light of a comprehensive definition of learning innovation where the adoption of both innovative tools and methods is taken into account, the paper presents the concept of Virtual Museum and discusses around their educational potential and value. Actually, VMs are innovative software applications that use vision, narration and interaction to create immersive experiences that bring visitors, students, scientists inside history, past landscapes, art, towns etc ... They deal with a wide variety of contents and adopt various approaches to support information delivery, awareness raising, knowledge creation and, ultimately, learning. In order to correctly frame the adoption of VMs for educational purposes, three different Virtual Museums are briefly presented by also underlining how, despite the specificity of the contents displayed, all of them can contribute to foster the students' motivation and effectively engage them in the learning process.