The Society of Information and Knowledge. (Unit 2. Pedagogy)

This topic is about the Society of Information and Knowledge, as we can read in the title, and we talk about the changes that have been produced during the last years in how people obtain the information, and also the influence that this fact have produced in education. It is also related to the use of the New Technologies, that become more popular day by day. 

I think that it is an interesting point from the point of view of Education, because in the last years, the way in which the world worked has changed a lot. 

At the end of the topic, there are some questions about it. You can answer if you want. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century education was perceived from the political state as a need to "social spending" to improve the social conditions of a country and thus to improve their situation and economic and technological position

At the end of the century there was a change to conceive education as an investment in social capital, and therefore families saw that education was a value that determined the possible future status of their children.

In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, education began to be perceived as an element of social, moral and cultural improvement of the people.

Society today is called Network Society, and is characterized by:

1. Globalization of economic activities

2. Increased intake and mass production of consumer goods.

3. Replacing mechanical production systems, by other character electronic and automatic.

4. Modification of the relations of production

5. The selection of development areas in research related to technological impact.

6. Flexibility of work and labor instability.

7. Emergence of new employment sectors

8. Turn around the media, around new technologies of information and communication, and as a result thereof, the potentiating of creation of a technological infrastructure.

9. Globalization of the media

10. The transformation of politics and of political parties, establishing new mechanisms

11. Tendency to an Americanization of society.

12. The establishment of principles of quality and cost effectiveness both in the products and results

13. Support a neoliberal ideological conception of society

This information society or knowledge is driven by different media and information technologies have been fundamental computing, telecommunications and multimedia.

The consequence is the increased of the separation between the villages developed and developing.

The reasons are:

1. In a global economy, the technology becomes a strategic element and a competitive factor of the first order and therefore nobody wants to transfer it disinterestedly.

2. When a technology is transferred, is transferred the product not the process of design and development. It is not given the knowledge which split to generate it, so there is a constant dependency of the developing countries to those that have transferred technology products.

3. Normally is not transferred leading edge technology, but rather technology is already outdated.

4. Lack of training, lack of business management autonomous and different cultural values, impede a real use and exploitation of technologies and solve problems emerged there.

The relations between the society and the technologies are bidirectional. The society influences to the creation and exponentiation of particular technologies and, at the same time, technologies propel particular social and cultural models. Technologies aren’t neutral.

The use of the new technologies without a previous cultural and training knowledge and without a spirit made to select and assess the information used, can lead to a cultural colonization and to the subjection to particular cultural clubs. It isn’t enough trying that all people can access to the information, is necessary that all people can be able to decide what information needs.

These technologies are showing impressive personally, with the exponentiation of new models of mind thanks to their potentialities to the simulation of phenomenons, in which project ideas and fantasy.

In the last years, is been developed an ideological speech in education about the new technologies that are understood like motors of change and didactic innovation.

To Cabero (1998), the technologies are only media and didactic resources, used by the teacher when he or she needs them to create a different and favorable environment to the learning.

The possibilities of the new technologies of information tend to be oversized and focus on its characteristics, instrumental potentialities and technological potential .

New technologies come to be closely linked to traditional technologies and thereby create a new galaxy of technologies where all can participate jointly with the project to be achieved .

Finally, we have to keep in mind that we dispose of sustainable technologies and accepted standards, with quality parameters.

The new technologies has some important elements:

-Creation of flexible environments to develop learning.

-Enhancing of interactive situations.

-Changes in the communication models and in the teaching-learning methods used by teachers.

-Use of situations that favours the individual and social collaborative work.

-Human interaction environment.

-Evaluation culture.

It is important not to make these two mistakes:

1. Parallelism between information and knowledge.
2. Think that have access to more information means be more informed.

The possibilities that these technologies offer to the interaction with the information allow us the use of textual information, sound, visual or audiovisual messages.

With the new technologies we can create environments to facilitate that users do the formative activity independently of the space and the time in which the teacher and the student are. This is “just-in-time training”, a formation when the student needs it.

These interactive possibilities allow that the communication control is moving toward  the receiver. This will determine the moment and the use modality.   

Some of the comments made earlier lead us to another possibility, which is the potential at the same time of an individualized work and cooperative, this brings many advantages, it has been shown in several studies the improving of the academic performance of students, by favoring interpersonal relationships. Overall it could be considered as a teaching methodology based on the belief that learning increases when students develop skills cooperatives together to learn and solve problems in which they are immersed.

To achieve a truly collaborative learning in training environments, a number of conditions must be taken by the teacher, as it can be:

1. The structuring and planning of the training strategy

2. The search for specific designs in the materials used

3. The specification of the roles to be played by the teacher and students

4. Determination of new criteria and evaluation strategies.

According to Paulsen we can distinguish the following ways of developing collaborative work:

- Building a team

- Nominal Group

- Forum

- Discussion Group

- Role play

- Formal Debate

The use of each of these forms depend on various factors, such as the objectives, the nature of the subject, the student characteristics, teacher style ...

One of the first measures to be adopted for the integration of media and teaching materials in the curriculum is that they are present in the training centers.

Another measure is that the teacher should assume different roles in the technological environment as information consultants, collaborators group, lone workers, facilitators, resource provider and academic supervisor.

As Harasim et al (2000) point out, in the context of e-learning, the teacher's role, unlike the traditional activity of the classroom, it is student-centered and requires a different role of the teacher, closer to an assistant than to the charge of teaching lessons:

"The emphasis must be on the student's own intellectual process and the collaborative learning”

In addition, the teacher must learn to work in group and in collaboration with other professionals.

Two of the most significant roles that teachers will play in these new learning environments, and no doubt will involve the need to acquire new skills and technical domains are moderator and virtual tutor.

In the new communication environments, computers are a basic part for communication between the different participants in the process of teaching and learning; we often refer to this as "computer mediated communication"; which is a type of training in which the transference, exchange, storage and communication is done through computers connected to the Internet or an intranet.

Ryan et al (2000) indicate that the computer mediated communication offers a number of possibilities for training: frequent contacts between students and tutors, cooperation and collaboration to emphasize learning, silence, reflection and application of the learning facilities of the students, continuous feedback to students and the possibility of developing different learning experiences.

These new features should lead us to reflect on the possibility that the training and improvement of teachers is one of the cornerstones that determine the inclusion of the media to the field of education.

Thus, the United Kingdom Department of Education and Science (1992) suggests that there are four basic objectives that should direct the training and improvement of teachers in new technologies:

a) The ability to have personal confidence in the use of a software package.

b) The ability to critically review the relevant software packages and equipment of information technology.

c) The ability to make a constructive use.

d) The ability to assess the way in which the use of Information Technologies changes the nature of teaching and learning.

In addition to the requirement changes in the faculty, the student must be able to teach himself by taking decisions, the choice of media and learning paths, and meaningful search for knowledge.

We should take into account two perspectives: the media  in the context, that is, the idea that learning does not occur in a vacuum but in the interaction of a given context; and the media as context, that is, the potential of media to create differentiated learning environments.

Finally, we must say that for the use and the curricular integration of the media and not a simply add, possibly we have to forget more the media and to focus on the remaining variables: teacher, students, content …

• It could be interesting to think about that, because maybe technology can be excessive nowadays, and it could be a good idea to take in mind that we can search for information in books or asking people, but it is only an example of what I think about this kind of Society in which we are living. 

If you want to say me something interesting about this topic, or if you want to comment something or give me your opinion, you can write a comment here or you can send me an email to this email address: albialbita@outlook.es.