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presented by both public prosecutors and defence lawyers, thus avoiding a partial information and because
several technical aspects are comprehensible only by analysing the two opposing interpretations.
Social Aspects of the Web Sites
Social aspects of the Web have being widely discussed over the past few years. To the aim of this paper, we are
interested in the view of the Web as a natural place for a number of communities that, by adopting the Net as
their virtual habit, communicate on specific topics, and which are tied by common interests. For example, for
many Italians living abroad, the Net has become the source for news about Italy.
As far as the two web sites described in this paper, Web users around the World have accessed and used them
as on-line anti-Mafia movement, by reading the complete documentation of the trials and sending messages of
solidarity to the victims' relatives and to the judges who are fighting against the Mafia.
Since some sections of the sites are in Italian, French, English and German, messages from all around the
World arrived; some of them were directly published in the Web, others were sent to the webmaster or some of
us.
Many Italians living abroad and elsewhere in Italy have been especially outspoken on the Internet.
"I am a Sicilian student in Wales...and I came across this very beautiful initiative to remember the Judge
Falcone.....Thanks to Falcone and Borsellino (another anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Mafia) and all people
that lost the life in the fighting against the mafia." a Sicilian wrote.
A person with the surname as the murdered judge’, while no relation to him, wrote: “I will not forget the man
who made me proud over my name. My grandfather left Sicily 65 years ago. He died as a soldier in the Great
War just as Giovanni Falcone. I wish I have had the opportunity to meet them both".
And many messages arrived from the rest of the World: an American wrote: "I wish 100 people were born for
each Falcone or Borsellino murdered by the mafia."
Yet, the message from a mother: "We don't want to forget it, we mustn't forget it, all we have to devote
ourselves to make our children remember and understand ......I am wife and mother. Women that have been
wounded by the mafia, you have to know that you are not alone."
Particularly impressive the message of solidarity from a Belgian judge: "I am solidly behind the Italian judges".
Finally, the site's dual social purpose - to provide information and an emotional outlet - leaded us to bring a
computer to the Piazza Magione in Palermo, where a demonstration was held in the dead judge's honour, on
the third anniversary of the Falcone murder. Over a live Internet line, we received and read aloud messages
arrived from the World. In addition, we put some images of the demonstration on-line, so that people in
Internet could be virtually present to the demonstration, thus virtually extending the physical square boundaries
to the whole Internet community. A similar solution was adopted on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of
the Falcone murder.
The Structure of the Learning Section
Over the past months, a variety of courseware has appeared on the WWW; many courses provide lecture
material in hypertext form and some of them include links to other documents world-wide. However, most of
the Internet based courseware provides individual learning environments, without exploiting one the most
effective educational feature provided by Internet: the interpersonal communication, basic to the co-operative
learning model.
The aim of the learning section in the Web sites described in this paper is to allow students to deepen the
Italian penal code, by analysing technical aspects of the two trials. Because of the availability of the acts of two
trials through the Web, it has been straightforward to adopt the Web as the interaction environment for the
actors of the didactic process.