Socratenon and its application to the learning of Italian language

Socratenon is a Web engine tuned to advanced Web education using the state-of-the-art Internet development technologies and tools. It enables interactive and creative learning/teaching management in four different domains (provider, administrator, teacher, and student). It also includes an interface to an artificial intelligence based tool for off-line improvement or learning curricula (ABITS or Aristotelon). One of the first applications of Socratenon was to help the learning of Italian language for Serbian students (the product was developed through a cooperation between universities in Salerno and Belgrade). This paper presents the basic elements of the Socratenon application and implementation philosophy, and discusses its possibilities in the general language- learning environment. It describes three different experiments and explains the lessons learned. The stress is on the statistical analysis of success of those who used our Web-based product and those who relied on the classical approaches.