PPEL – Individual, Collaboration, Cooperation

Morten Paulsen (2008). Theory of Cooperative Freedom. Available at http://toonlet.com/archive?m=s&i=10870. Accessed on 25-10-2009.

These are the questions I asked myself at the beginning of my research about Cooperative freedom.

What is cooperation?

Is it the same as collaboration?

What is the difference between both cooperation and collaboration?

This cartoon that I found here and which author is Morten Paulsen, explains the difference between those two concepts. This was actually a very useful resource for me when I started thinking about cooperative freedom. It’s a very simple way of explaining two concepts that we often think mean exactly the same thing. I hope you also find it useful.

PPEL – Cooperative freedom

Morten Paulsen – Cooperative freedom: An online education theory, available at http://www.studymentor.com/cooperative_freedom.pdf. Accessed on 25-10-2009

In this article Morten Paulsen talks about the Theory of Cooperative Freedom, describing what the word cooperative means in distance education as well as freedom. This theory is influenced by Knowles’ Theory of Andragogy which defends that adult learners perceive themselves as self-directed human beings, defining themselves according to their personal achievements and experiences.

The Theory of Cooperative Freedom understands the distance students as people who need cooperation with their peers as much as individual freedom.

Paulsen states 6 facets of freedom in his Hexagon of Cooperative Freedom: time, space, pace, medium, access and content.

Usually we can think that freedom and cooperation are two opposite concepts. Paulsen refers to that in his article. But, if we think about cooperative learning and the tools that are nowadays available for people to learn, we cannot keep conceiving these two concepts without relating them to each other. With the web 2.0 tools, we have space for ourselves, for our individual learning process but we can also learn from and with others, as well as they can learn from and with us. Tools like twitter, Facebook, MSN, blogs, allow us to share information and knowledge that our peers can use in their learning process.

PPEL – Sapocampus

Santos, C; fraser, J; Pedro, L (2009). SAPO Campus: a social media platform and PLE for Higher Education. Paper presented at EDEN 09, Porto. Available at http://labs.sapo.pt/ua/sapocampus/files/2009/10/eden2009_carlossantos_josiefraser_luispedro.pdf. Accessed on 25-10-2009.

http://labs.sapo.pt/ua/sapocampus/

The discovery of a project like Sapo Campus was a great surprise at the right time. Now that I am seeking for information about cooperative freedom in distance courses, exploring and trying to know more about this project enthuses me. Usually we hear about the discussion between choosing for LMSs or PLEs. Not so long ago I attended the Creative Learning marketplace, in Lisbon and listened to George Siemens, in his speech on Connectivism,  talking about exactly that: LMS vs. PLE/Networks.

As the article mentioned above states, more and more we use a huge amount of web 2.0 tools daily: blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, social networks and other kinds of applications that allow our cooperation and that we can learn with and from each others. The learning process nowadays has to be looked at with a different scope. Perhaps now that we see projects and ideas like sapocampus happening it does no longer make sense discussions like LMS vs. PLE. We can make use of both in a cooperative way.

Comunicação mediada por computador

Deixo o link para o vídeo da apresentação no Second Life sobre Comunicação mediada por computador: uma abordagem da ciência cognitiva, que eu, o Paulo Simões, a Mónica Velosa e o Zé Carlos Figueiredo fizémos.

Trabalhos/novos recursos

Estive uns meses sem escrever no Blog, mas não estive parada 🙂

Aqui ficam trabalhos que realizei para o Mestrado e que não tinha ainda tido oportunidade de aqui publicar:

As redes sociais e o processo de ensino/aprendizagem

Recurso educativo e respectiva ficha descritiva

“Exposição de Ensino a Distância: passado, Presente e Futuro” – O Conectivismo