C’era una volta il libro di testo: l’ebook tra sfide tecnologiche, risposte legislative, istanze glottodidattiche e bisogni educativi speciali

After an introductory excursus on the recent legislation regarding the adoption of digital textbooks in Italian schools, this paper focuses on the possible effects of the digitizing process on language teaching, also taking into account the data of some ongoing classroom experiments.The results of a mainly qualitative survey, conducted on a non-representative sample of secondary school language teachers, highlight both the strengths of digital texts - especially with regard to students with special needs - and their weaknesses, which relate essentially to the need for a closer link between research and the dissemination of knowledge, the need to equip schools with appropriate technology, and, above all, the need for effective teacher training.