Session 5a: Cultures of Online Learning
5th Global Conference
Friday 12th March – Sunday 14th March 2010
Salzburg, Austria
E-learning 2.0 as Reciprocal Learning
Paolo Lattanzio
Department of Communication Studies, University of Teramo
Traditional e-learning is structured as a fenced platform, with reserved access and fixed roles. The aspect we analyse is the e-learning’s innovations related to hybridisation with web 2.0, that is an evolutional way of “read-write-web”.
E-learning 2.0 uses the knowledge in an open mode, accessible and dynamic bending technical side to the needs of user. It is an epistemological difference for online learning environment.
With the revolution of web 2.0, that brings users to become protagonists in the media through direct and open publishing, the spaces of interaction and the way to grant and enjoy learning object are changed.
We can talk about “e-learning 2.0”. This kind of e-learning is perfectly integrated with web thanks to the embedding which makes it modular and flexible.
E-learning 2.0 provides the elimination of the platform’s ties that in maremagnum of the web are unnatural, for an open web-based participation based on real-time communication and instant feedback.
Analogue important changes also exist in the life of learning communities: they cover a wide range of issues, from virtual fixed classroom to a kind of digital nomadism. From a communication “from one to many” typical of e-learning, we go to “from many to many” communication which indicates a kind of “reciprocal learning”.
The learner has now a chance to choose his/her personal way to learn, because he/she can choose a teaching language which is based on different communicative skills thanks the richness of didactic contents that web 2.0 gives.
In this way text, teaching practices and pedagogical methodologies are open to sharing and reuse. The result is a didactic paradigm’s change that evolves from “push” to “pull” way. We can finish with a provocation: why learning contents cannot be downloadable in next future as happens with every digital contents?
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New Media Literacies of Future Mother Tongue Teachers
Hana Maresova and Jaroslav Slama
Department of Czech Language and Literature , Faculty of Education, Palacky University, Czech Republic
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have become a very important part of our everyday lives. Thus the ICT skills have become an essential need for everyone who wants to benefit from innovation of the modern world. On the face of it, we can say that ICT play an important role especially in education. Teachers already understand that integration of ICT within the educational process is necessary but many of them are in the early stages of using ICT in the classrooms and ICT are considered as something new and strange. For mother tongue teachers, it is the essential need of ICT skills and competencies to be able to work with ICT in the classroom but apart from the teachers of other subjects, there are many new implications and topics coming with the use of ICT: new stylistic and communication forms have been created as e-mail, blogging, hypertext novels, chat, electronic conferences, new multimedia journalistic forms etc. To help our students develop ICT skills, seminar focused on use of ICT in the mother tongue education was prepared and has been realized since 2003 at Faculty of Education, Palacky University, Olomouc. To help our students improve knowledge about cyberspace and topics focused on e-literature, subject New Media and Cyberculture has been realized since 2003 at Faculty of Education and Philosophical Faculty. The seminars help our future teachers to work with ICT in educational process and use the issue of new media in the three parts of mother tongue education (grammar, literature and stylistic education and communication training). Article describes our experience from the seminars and concrete examples of education in cyberspace and working with blogs, social networks, 3D multiuser virtual environments, hypertexts, Web 2.0 tools (and others) are analyzed.
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Teenager’s Vision of School Life and ICT: Which Role does Cyberbullyism plays?
Giulia Mura
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
Purpose: Cyberbullying is a new phenomenon, rapidly spreading among young people of the Information Society. The diffusion of information technology in Italy is predominant in the younger generations: along with obvious benefits, it is important to evaluate the possible connected risks. This research project aims to investigate the uses and misuses of ICT among a sample of Italian students.
Methods: A total of 475 middle school and high school students completed a questionnaire investigating the diffusion and representations of conflicts in the schools of Milan. One section of the questionnaire analyzed more specifically the use of ICT among the students and the spread of cyberbullying.
Results: Cyberbullying appears to be a relevant phenomenon among Milan’s students. In line with the European figures, at least 10% of the students declare to have been victim of cyberbullying. The numbers increase when considering telephonic harassment. Students who have been victims of cyberbullying differ significantly from those who never had such an experience in online behaviour and in the representation of new technology. Victims of cyberbullying also report the worst image of their school environment and schoolmates, seen as more hostile and less supportive.
Conclusions: In Italy the study of the diffusion of cyberbullying among young people is still at an early stage, but the press is increasingly drawing attention to this problem. In addition, the first surveys, done locally, seem to support the hypothesis of its growth in our country. An in depth investigation of the phenomenon seems to be the first necessary step which could lead to effective preventive and counter-actions.
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