Since the advent of writing – the first intellectual technology with which humanity has provided itself - people have discussed the impact of technologies on the development of the faculty that most distinguishes ourselves as a species: learning. A renewed interest of these discourses has grown up as a consequence of the integration of digital technologies in educational contexts.
Skinner’s Teaching Machines has led more than one to believe that the teaching-learning process could reach new goals if conducted by automatic devices according to programmed patterns. For seventy years this belief has been discredited. However current developments in Artificial Intelligence have brought this issue back to the forefront: are the current Machine Learning, able to replace the human being by transforming the learning process? What are the potentials of the new Machine Learning? And what are the opportunities and the challenges of this new technology for education.
The aim of this publication is to overcome the irreconcilable position, on one side, of who underlines a specific and irreplaceable role of the human relationship in this area and who, on the other side, highlights the unprecedented possibilities offered by Artificial Intelligence inside the process of constructing and sharing knowledge. The aim is to support increasing awareness that digital technologies – more or less intelligent – pervade our lives and play an ongoing and important role in educational contexts through sharing experiences that analyse technologies from cognitive, social, and ethics perspectives.

Therefore, this special issue seeks contribution in the field of:
 Machine Learning applications on the field of education;
 Virtual and augmented reality applications in the field of education;
 Educational robotics;
 Artificial tutoring systems;
 Learning analytics;
 Educational data mining;
 Serious games.

However, as this special issue is dedicated to the CKBG biennial conference held in Padua on November 18th-20th 2019, articles dealing with the topics discussed during this conference will also be considered.