The New Disorder of Knowledge

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer” Richard Stallman

"A very large part of what we know, and how we know it is fluid, evolutionary and context dependent" Dave Snowden

The new Network is representing a change in the way we conceive Learning. We are moving from an old hierarchy to a distributed disorder in which identity is reformulated and chaos becomes a new form of organization. Education needs to change dramatically and adapt to the new reality, or even 2.0 won't have enough time to launch lifeboats to water. What we call Relatively Organized Chaos has to do with Freedom and Responsibility of individuals and, therefore, with cultural aspects rather than technological ones. As language teachers (ELE / SFL, Spanish as a Foreign Language), we are in a privileged position to implement these changes. That is because, in part, we have dealt with these topics for a long time, through documents and research as important as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) or the new Spanish Instituto Cervantes Curriculum (IPPC), that advocates an action-oriented approach focused on the learner and it has put into fair value strategies and processes. From there, we must increase the "resilience" capacity of the existing frameworks in order to make them more flexible (“chaotic”) and focused on long-term learning ("learning for life"), all within what George Siemens called “Connective Intelligence", a concept that tries to go beyond the "Collective Intelligence".

Contributions as important as the “Connective Theory” (Siemens), “Informal Learning” (Jay Cross) or “Serendipitous Learning” (Teemu Arina) go along these lines. These are ideas that were born from the Network itself, unlike other educational theories such as Constructivism, originated in pre-teaching environments, and that therefore can hardly be adapted to the new reality. We will also draw attention to other emerging concepts, such as “Accidental Learning”: "Every day I make an effort to go toward what I do not understand. This wandering leads to the accidental learning that continually shapes my life." (cellist Yo-Yo Ma ) What should be the position of education towards this new situation and values, when facing with this new order that is disorder at once? Undoubtedly, we must begin to be open-minded and be more receptive to the new physical and virtual reality, because in case these realities don't coexist and feed each other, they are condemned to falsehood.

Stephen Downes has explained us that the way to learn is different depending on the time and the context in which we live. Therefore, the concept of Learning is not something fixed and needs to be constantly redefined. Our role as educators, as well as the role of learners and institutions, is to overcome fear – it was called ”Fear 2.0” in the last Educause- and become aware of this. There is no doubt that this is a complicated task because it requires rethinking concepts and basic values, many of whom do not fit with the existing educational structure, based on closed/narrow ideas, courses, final evaluations, contents, low value of the process, collide in a violent way with this new reality of constant change, chaotic and distributed. However, it becomes a need for Education to pact with the referred ideas of the new disorder: informal learning, life-long learning, action-oriented learning and focused on the learner and his or her learning processes, with freedom and individual responsibility.

The paradigms and educational values we will speak about go in parallel with the concepts of Free Knowledge and Free Software. These "educational values" are, in fact, an important theoretical and conceptual support for these concepts. In general, e-learning models are still based on a course-structure very similar to the one found in the traditional classroom: closed contents that are evaluated and certified. We believe that it is very important that the community of e-learning and Free Software were aware and took into account new open educational approaches: Connected, informal and distributed learning, since they fit better and are closely related to the concept of Freedom that supports the Free Software and Educating in Freedom, and because we believe that Education should promote tools that allow more open approaches that are connected with reality. Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that the learning environment determines the way in which content is built, so the teacher must pay attention to this context and learn to handle it.

In this presentation we will also speak about the role of the School, which maybe it ́s in the way of being transformed to the point of disappearing. This will refer to the "Three Stages" on the relationship between knowledge and individual, explained by Seymour Papert (1980), and the need to came back to Stage 1 -which was interrupted by the limitations of schooling- in order to install "life-long learning" in our lives. The technology helps us to re-locate the individual in the Zone of Proximal Development as defined by Vygotsky. In this way, we discuss a program of maximum where the border is the “abolition” of school and that learning must become part of a vital ecology to do this so as absent, invisible and ubiquitous.

Some References and Further Reading:

Arina, Teemu: Serendipic Learning and the Third Place (slideshare)

Bean, Cammy: Accidental Learning. In: http://learningvisions.blogspot.com/2008/03/accidental-learning.html

Cross, Jay: Informal Learning. Rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance. And Learning Blog: http://infrml.com

Downes, Stephen: Education 2.0. National Research Council of Canada. In Elearning Magazine.

Dewey, John: http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2008/04/moving-workplac.html

Gatarski, Richard: http://nodosele.blogspot.com/search?q=gatarski

Moravec http://www.concepcionabraira.info/img/educacion1a3.png

Papert, Seymour (1980): Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas.

The Harvester Press Limited. Shank, Roger in Edge. 2006: ¿Cuál es tu idea peligrosa?: "No más miradas indecentes de los maestros"

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism. A learning theory for the Digital Age. In: http://elearnspace/Articles/connectivism.htm

Siemens, G. (2007). Knowling Knowledge. In: http://knowingknowledge.com/2006/10/knowingknowledgepdf_files.php

Siemens, G. (2007): "Collective Intelligence? Nah. Connective Intelligence" in http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/archives/003269.html

Stallman, R. (1999). Free Software Foundation. Cambridge, MA: Free Software Foundation

Zeitgeist Learning: The Future of Education is Just-in-Time, Multidisciplinary, Experimental, Emergen