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WebEduca: an Educational Social Network with an Emphasis on Open Educational
Resources (OER)
Eduardo Heinzem, Sergio Jeremias, Rafael Avila Faraco, Murilo Matos Mendonça, Diva Marília
Flemming, Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina (UNISUL)
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]
Abstract
The insertion of new technological resources in the educational milieu is imminent, given the
possibilities of reach of the Internet and the social networks, used primarily as tools to contact
and disseminate contents amongst a variety of different types of people who make up the vast
Internet universe. Thus, it is possible to create within curricula the proper conditions for the
thriving of such values as critical understanding, solidarity, collaboration, curiosity which leads
to knowledge, and finally the ethical values inherent to participatory citizenship as opposed to
totalitarian thinking and practices. Based on this scenario, the present article aims at describing
the creation process of the WebEduca Network, an educational social network grounded on the
concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) and which seeks to integrate Secondary School
teachers and students of the state public school system of Santa Catarina (SC), Brazil. The results
obtained during the validation phase of this educational social network were based on the
functionality and usability criteria presented in the ISO/IEC 9126-1: 2001 norm and followed
from qualitative and practical methodological procedures. According to the aforementioned
criteria, qualifying scores range from 1 to 5 and those obtained ranged from 3 to 5. Therefore,
WebEduca Network enables the production, adaptation, sharing and dissemination of the most
diverse types of OER by means of collaborative practices, thus becoming an important tool to
help enhance the ways whereby we teach and learn.
Keywords
Open Educational Resources; Educational Social Network; Collaborative Learning.
Introduction
In the network society of today, the new conceptions of what learning and teaching are require
that the functions of schools be reconsidered both as regards their organizational structure and in
relation to teachers’ and students’ roles as well. The changes happening in the teaching and
learning processes are strongly influenced by the introduction of the Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet. The use of ICTs in education allow
the creation of environments which promote a variety of pedagogical experiences and lead
people to perceive that learning is a lifelong process and that it can be free of time and space
constraints.
The widespread educational culture based on dominant, established practices and contents does
not allow for student diversity and unequal conditions of human development. Instead, it
prescribes contents and pedagogical rites of homogenized knowledge transmission.
Notwithstanding, the recent transformations in society call for changes in educational practices
given the growing distance between the activities proposed by schools and those experienced in
today’s network society.
From a lifelong learning perspective, students cease to be the recipients of information and
become responsible for the construction of their own knowledge. They use computers and the
Internet to search, select and inter-relate significant information in order to explore, reflect upon
and represent their own ideas, according to their individual style and way of thinking. It is up to
teachers to provide them with challenging environments where technology helps to promote
autonomy, creativity, knowledge systematization, collaboration and self-esteem.
It is within this context that the use of social networks stands out as a supporting tool to teaching
and learning processes. The digital social networks constitute an important educational
technology tool and a means of transferring and sharing information and knowledge
(CARVALHO, 2011; MIRANDA, 2011). Digital social networks approximate people based on
their profiles of behavior and needs in terms of learning. They have an almost infinite potential
to promote cooperation, collaboration and social interaction if we are to consider all their
possibilities of connection and interaction among people.
Amidst the new trends in open education based on the Internet, Open Educational Resources
(OER) have been increasingly considered to be an alternative towards inclusive, open and free
education. OER are any teaching and research materials in the public domain or openly licensed
so that they can be widely adapted, remixed, shared and reused (BUTCHER et al., 2011;
UNESCO, 2013).
The development and use of OER by means of digital social media tools and platforms converge
to materialize their proposal of collaboration, co-creation and sharing of the knowledge needed
in the new reality of the so-called knowledge society. The process of recreating new contents
from the open resources made available in the digital social networks provides the opportunity
for collective open learning.
Within this context, this article presents a study of the use of a digital social network with Open
Educational Resources called WebEduca Network. The purpose of this article is to describe the
development process of an educational social network environment designed to promote open
and collaborative learning in Secondary Education by involving teachers and students in the
production, adaptation, sharing and dissemination of OER.
The article is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the methodology used to build this article
and the base technologies supporting the implementation of the WebEduca Network; Section 3
provides a brief description of OER and how they integrate the WebEduca Network; Section 4
presents and explains the main features of the WebEduca Network; Section 5 includes the tests
used to validate the network.
Methodology
The present research deploys qualitative methodological procedures, considering the nature of
the problem it sets out to investigate and the objectives proposed (RICHARDSON et al., 1989).
Given the initial objective of conducting a comprehensive investigation of the different subjects
which fall under the scope of this study, the first phase of this research is characterized as
exploratory. Exploratory research entails review of bibliography, interviews with people who
had practical experiences with the problem under investigation as well as an analysis of
examples which may help understand it. Exploratory research is generally conducted by means
of review of bibliography and case studies (GIL, 1991).
This research also involves technological development in that its main purpose is to implement a
digital social network virtual platform for Secondary Education with an emphasis on OER and
called WebEduca. According to Valeriano (1998), technological research is a type of applied
research since it aims at building either a product, a prototype, a process, or a study to make
them feasible.
The Elgg framework was chosen for the implementation of the WebEduca prototype as it is an
open code tool developed with the PHP programming language, which allows the construction of
digital social networks using the concept of modules. Each Elgg module represents a specific
functionality. Such modules can alternate freely or new ones can be created to suit the needs of
each digital social network.
In order to evaluate the WebEduca Network a Likert scale research instrument was designed
based on the works of Schlemmer and Fagundes (2001). Altogether, 64 students and 2 teachers
using the WebEduca Network responded out of a total of 238 users. Data collection was carried
out by means of an electronic questionnaire on Google Docs and a graphic representation of the
results obtained is provided in the results and discussion section.
The WebEduca Network
The WebEduca educational social network is a self-motivated and self-guided learning space
which enables teachers and students to design and share a variety of multimedia educational
materials in light of the principles and the concept of OER.
It is in the nature of WebEduca to encourage the production of OER in order to substitute for and
fill the gap left by other didactical materials often obsolete and no longer suitable for the current
educational context. In addition, the network allows the constant registration of new users, user
profile editing tools, file exchange (texts, videos, images, animations, sound files) based on the
concept of OER and under a Creative Commons license, messaging, private messaging and
creation of discussion forums.
WebEduca also enables the creation of photo and image albums based on the concept of OER
and licensed under Creative Commons. It features a real time chat tool and allows the
visualization of all registered users as well as the search for users, groups and any contents
posted within the network. WebEduca integrates an online library using Google Books, thus
enabling teachers and students to search for complete texts and books and providing them with
access to a range of new materials to enhance their teaching and learning processes. Figure 1
presents the main interface of WebEduca.
The WebEduca educational social network was designed grounded on the concept of OER,
which focuses on two major principles: open licenses which allow greater flexibility of use and
the legal use of didactical resources; and technical openness in the sense of utilizing resource
formats which are easy to open and modify in any software, thereby allowing for
interoperability.
The WebEduca Network is focused on education and the dissemination of diversified
knowledge. Its main purpose is to aid teachers and students of Secondary Education by
facilitating their interaction within the network and enabling them to exchange information and
knowledge always under the OER assumptions in order to help improve the teaching and
learning processes in public Secondary Education.
Figure 01.WebEduca Educational Social Network Homepage
Source: Authors, 2013
The possibilities that both teachers and students have of engaging and producing resources as
opposed to merely using them is a differential of the WebEduca Network. Schools usually
receive ready resources such as coursebooks and teachers and students have few genuine
opportunities to engage with those materials. They often experience a feeling of imprisonment to
didactical materials which are not suitable for their needs or working contexts.
WebEduca, on the other hand, provides students with an opportunity to access and use OER for
their educational advancement. Amongst other possibilities, it allows them to create forums, ask
teachers questions, suggest and/or modify materials posted by others, upload images, interact
with other students and teachers.
Materials uploaded as OER to WebEduca by either teachers or students (texts, videos, images,
etc) will be immediately available for sharing and may be modified when released under the
appropriate open license category.
OKADA e LESLIE (2012) stress that the process of creating new contents from existing open
resources on social networks provides an opportunity for collective open learning whereby
learners can learn together not only through access to contents but also from the experience of
reconstructing them by integrating their individual interpretations and getting feedback from the
co-learners within their social networks.
The relationships triggered by the WebEducaNetwork do not lose strength. On the contrary,
strong bonds are created amongst the active agents in the network and a constant exchange of
experiences and knowledge has been observed.
Results and Discussion
During the trial period of 90 days under the URL www.redewebeduca.com, the WebEduca
Network allowed the creation of a community of active users whose figures are presented in
Table 1.
Groups
Users
Videolibrary
Textfileslibrary
Imagelibrary
Imagequantity
Messages
Linksandtips
Messageboards
Topicsbeingdiscussed
Table1 – WebEduca Figures
Source: Rede WebEduca, 2013
20
238
65
35
06
17
96
24
10
05
For evaluation purposes a questionnaire was used as a research instrument. Altogether, 66 users
answered the questionnaire, out of which 02 were teachers and 64 were students from a total of
238 registered users detected during the trial period of 90 days. The questions included three
perspectives: technological; didactical and pedagogical; and VLE management and they were
adapted from the works of Fagundes &Schlemmer (2001).
As regards the aspects of Inteligibility and Aprehensibility, graphs 1a and 1b show that the
dynamics of the WebEduca Network, how to use it, and the way in which the concept of OER
and its application are presented were considered to be easy by most respondents.
Graph 1a: Inteligibility
Graph 1b: Aprehensibility
In terms of Operability and Search Tool, graphs 2a and 2b indicate that for most respondents it
was easy to use the WebEduca Network and that it made it possible for them to perform fast
searches of various topics.
Graph 2a: Usability
Graph 2b: Searching tools
Graphs 3a and 3b indicate a positive evaluation of the aspects Adding Resources and Creating
and Importing Information.
Graph 3a: Adding Resources
Graph 3b: Creating and Importing
Information
Graphs 4a and 4b illustrate the respondents’ positive evaluation of the aspects related to
Multimedia Resources and the Online Library.
Graph 4a: Multimedia Resources
Graph 4b: Online Library
According to graphs 5a and 5b, the aspects regarding Autonomous Learning and Interaction were
positively evaluated by most respondents.
Graph 5a: Autonomous Learning
Graph 6b: Interaction Resources
The graphs indicate that in general the aspects of the WebEduca Network herein analyzed were
evaluated as either good or excellent by most respondents, which means WebEduca helped to
effectively improve teaching and learning processes.
The answers provided by the two participating teachers ranked the WebEduca Network as
excellent in relation to all of the aspects analyzed. Given the low number of teacher respondents,
the data obtained cannot be considered to be significant. Nonetheless, they hint at a tendency to
consider WebEduca as a tool which can contribute to improve teaching and learning processes.
Overall, based on the data obtained it was possible to notice that Secondary Education needs
more tools to enable knowledge dissemination, exchange and collective construction in practical
and accessible ways to an ever-growing number of learners. WebEduca’s strongest appeal comes
from the fact that it constitutes an environment where knowledge is openly accessible and where
the materials therein produced or made available can be explored to their full potential and in
collaborative ways. After the 90-day trial period, WebEduca has remained active and the number
of users keeps growing.
Final Remarks
The use of ICTs in Brazilian education is far from reaching its true potential. There are excellent
ideas and practices which can be adopted in order to modernize education in Brazil and enhance
the teaching and learning processes. Based on the data obtained after the 90-day trial period of
implementation of the WebEduca Network it was possible to observe that the effective use of
ICTs in Secondary Education makes a significant difference in the process of knowledge
construction and acquisition.
OER make it possible to raise educational standards and can yield significant results through a
culture that welcomes different ways and possibilities of learning, teaching and constructing
knowledge, as seen in the assignments done for the Portuguese Language course by 12 th grade
students, which resulted from the intereactions that took place within the WebEduca network.
The difference between teacher and student participation in the WebEduca Network was striking:
02 teachers volunteered to join as opposed to 236 students. This contrast in behavior points out
to the necessity of invesatigating the reasons why teachers resist and at the same time evinces
students’ eagerness for new ways of learning.
The WebEduca Network remains fully operational and users go on participating actively,
constantly feeding contents to the network, seeking to take advantage of the possibilities of
sharing, building and disseminating knowledge provided by WebEduca.
Analysis of the data collected indicated a marked and significant improvement in the teaching
and learning processes. And there is no doubt that technological development can contribute to
expand and enhance the possibilites of teaching and learning for all as long as there is
commitment from all stakeholders.
The incorporation of the WebEduca Network into the technological resources previously availabe in
the State Secondary Education System helped to encourage solidary interaction aiming at collective
knowledge construction, sharing and appropriation. From the standpoint of the WebEduca Network,
the term collaboration is assumed as the possibility of sharing experiences and knowledge amongst
peers within an environment designed especially to that end.
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License and Citation
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Please cite this work as: Heinzem, E., Jeremias, S.,
Faraco, R.A., Mendonça, M.M., Flemming, D.M. (2014). WebEduca: an Educational Social
Network with an Emphasis on Open Educational Resources (OER). In Proceedings of
OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2014: Open Education for a Multicultural World.