Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
it to their local reality are potentially infinite. The public sphere, defined by Habermas
as “a network of communication of information and points of view”, becomes
global and digital, and thus, so do the opportunities of education and access to
scientific knowledge.
It becomes fundamental, therefore, to comprehend, from the perspective of a
country in development, how the Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), mainly the Internet and the relationship and communication networks,
made possible by the Web 2.0 2 , created new rights and duties to the citizen. This
connected learning process, which can contribute to the citizen’s formation, also
creates new obligations and guidelines for institutions and governments. In very developed
countries, mandates for open access and public policies encouraging open
educational resources are part of the new range of duties of the state and rights of
the citizen. As stated by Castells, the technologic capacity, the technological infrastructure,
the access to knowledge and highly qualified human resources became
essential sources of competitiveness in the new international work division (2001,
p.109) and of the possibility of development.
Connectivism, learning and openness
Connectivism is the theory that describes how learning takes place in the digital
age. This theory discusses how the learning changes in an environment wherein the
expansion of the available knowledge is overwhelming, and technology takes man's
place in many tasks previously carried out manually. Connectivism approaches is-
2. “The term web 2.0 was defined by O’Reily in 2005 to denote emerging tools and services where
the emphasis of use had shifted from the web as a source of information to a web that was more participatory,
characterised by user-generated content and peer critiquing (OReilly 2005). Blogs, wikis
and social networking sites such as Facebook are the most commonly cited and used examples of web
2.0 tools for fostering communication, coupled with sites for sharing content (such as Flickr, YouTube
and Slideshare). Collectively these offered a rich set of tools to support new forms of communication,
sharing and networking. Not surprisingly there has been considerable interest in how these tools might
be used in an educational context (ALEXANDER, 2006; ALA-MUTKA, 2009; REDECKER,
2008). Arguably the characteristics of these web 2.0 tools (active participation, peer critique, collective
intelligence through social aggregation of resources etc.) align well with what is the perceived wisdom
on ‘good pedagogy’ (inquiry-based or problem-based learning, dialogic and collaborative learning,
constructivism and active engagement)” (DE FREITAS & G. CONOLE, 2010).
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