Apprendre2.0

Apprendre2.0 is a online social network of more than 2200 French-speaking actors mainly working in the education and in the training fields. Their project is to experiment and to understand the impact of the technologies on learning process. The major idea is that technologies are throwing us in a new meta-paradigm : the paradigm of learning to learn. In this change, citizens are invited to build and to live in a culture of Learning society through its networks.
The Social learning dynamics which are involved there, have already been studied for example by Kurt Lewin in "Psychologie dynamique - les relations humaines", by Chris Argyris and Donald Schön in "Organizational Learning" or by Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline. In these models, the contribution of the technologies is important because they accelerate, amplify, modify the perspectives and the processes of identity transformations, analyzed in the light of the notions of individuation (Gilbert Simondon) and of transindividuation) (Bernard Stiegler).
These current metamorphoses are in the heart of the researches in sciences of the education, as shown in some recent conferences on the subject. In fact, the new culture of "learning society" hits quite hard the traditional institutions of education from which a certain number Apprendre 2.0’s members belong. For them, It is a question of exchanging their experiences from educational institutions or from social networks and their big actors, in order to find the most legitimate learning ways which combine and transform both of them.
History
Apprendre2.0 was created in August on 2007 under the impulse of Florence Meichel following a "" that she has made during her university course.
The creation of Apprendre2.0 answered two necessities :
* To Set up and to explore environments of collaborative work which offered, for the first time on the web, the possibility to build, in a simple and fast way, a thematic social network.
* To Bring, in a French language, a concrete and relevant answer to the needs of feedbacks about experiences, of exchanges and of learnings, on the theme " Apprenticeship and information and technology communication ".
Technical medium
In the beginning, a period of tests, of developments and of exchanges on a non-free platform was spread out from August, 2007 till July, 2011. Then the group decided to take a new direction in term of autonomy and chose to work exclusively on free tools. So it financed and operated a new platform, a completely open one this time, assembled around the software Buddypress hosted by the company OVH. It is the technical shape that the current version of Apprendre2.0 takes.
Problematic aspect
The Emergence of a global digital culture modifies profoundly and durably the way we reach to the information, through augmented Reality, semantic Web, Internet of Things, the new forms of User interface, Ubiquitous computing, etc. The challenge now consists in understanding how to transform the ambient informations into relevant knowledge, both on the individual and collective level, and thus, how to learn in the siècle of digital technology.
Apprendre2.0 tries to bring a creative and sustainable answer by developing a type of learning organization articulated on a Lifelong learning to learn. Apprendre2.0 is thus an on-line social network of mutual knowledges exchanges, where we get into questions of apprenticeships in the era of the digital technology, and where we experiment, think around these exchanges about the apprenance, assuming completely the loops operated by this approach.
Indeed, the processes generates continuous iterations between a sort of formal training and informal training and commit the learners in a blend of cognitive approaches: Cognitivism, Connectionism, socio-, Enaction, etc... The learning loops constitute the auto-organizing regulations of this approach (theory of Self-organization).
Methods of work
As in most social networks, the members of Apprendre2.0 cooperate on this platform in order to:
* Publish or comment an article on a subject, an idea or a questionning about "apprenance"
* Launch or to take part in a discussion within the forum
* Share a daily work of bookmarking about learning problems (This work has been specially analyzed in the doctoral thesis supported by Michèle Drechsler under the title " The practices of the socialbookmarking in the field of the education ")
"The extracts of the interviews show that Socialbookmarking helps them (the members) to make
decisions, to locate themselves, to learn how to learn." writes Michèle Drechsler (page 224)
* Collaborate on specific projects through working groups around thematic like the [http://fr. .org/wiki/G%C3%A9n%C3%A9rateur_Po%C3%AF%C3%A9tique Generator Poïétique], the learning organizations or the "Moodle and learning environments 2.0"
* Give and/or receive a training between peers of Apprendre2.0 (logic of the networks of mutual knowledges exchanges)
* Promote a service or an event which presents a particular interest for the community of learning etc...
This participation in the "classic" network activities allows each members to focuse on remarquable news, to meet innovative and visionary people, to validate ideas or to discover new concepts… In the these conversations via technical medium, emerge (or not) some other forms, or some other ideas which are going to hold the attention of members, and which are going to be recognized as a sign making sense for each and/or for all. All these dynamics are phenomena of emergent intentionality (such as Francisco Varela made a description) whose Generator Poïétique constitutes a model.
In parallel, all these fundamental experiential activities make the material from which each member of the network learns to stand back and to thinks about his own practices of apprenticeship, so that he can develop these capacities permantly in a relevant way (Double loop learning).In this process, the reflexive distance creates the conditions of an autonomous construction of invariants linked to the competences of learning to learn. And this new cognitive skill precisely, which has something to do with the individuation and the transindividuation processes, will be reinvested and transferred on the in other new learning contexts.
Nota bene : In a context of digital perspective according to Olivier Auber, the legitimacy of the educational systems will credibly be more and more leaned and estimated on these meta-cognitive dynamics.
Co-management
Apprendre2.0 is a sort of association, self financing her running costs, independent from any company, institution or influencer. The participation is built on voluntary work and on freedom. The registration is open and free.
Some common life rules structure the relations between the members: the respect for each other, the strictly located management of the promotional space and the follow-up of the editorial baseline based on the apprenance constitute the moderation criteria. This work of regulation is always made by the administrators' team after publishing.
Finally, the shape of the leadership is very strictly associated with the design of its working platform. It evolves naturally towards more distributed and more participative forms, while that the members walk steps by steps towards emancipation.
Influence
Today, the direct interactions on the website Apprendre2.0 are less frequent than in the beginning but Apprendre2.0 is one of the historic referents on the aspect of learning network online. It is regularly quoted as resource, for example here:
* Apprendre2.0 : resource for the regional education authority of Nantes about learning to learn -
* Education - Lists of French-speaking websites under creative commons
* Listing of Social Networks used in educational environments for educational purposes [http://www.educationalnetworking.com/List+of+Networks]
* Association of the Clionautes :
Apprendre2.0 will have also, to a certain manner, inspired some institutional initiatives such as:
* The Respire educational network
* The learning organization : communication and organization
* Learn to learn
 
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