GETED (Group of research and studies about Educational Technology and Distance Education) Maria Cristina Lima Paniago Lopes Education Post-Graduation Programme Universidade Católica Dom Bosco (UCDB)

UCDB (Universidade Católica Dom Bosco)

GETED- Registered at Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

GETED Composed by: professionals from Institutions of Higher Education (private and public) middle and high schools professionals master and PhD students All of them: concerned with the insertion of information and communication technologies (ICT) and virtual environments at the teaching and learning processes.

2006 The use of the communication and information tools (ICT) at undergraduate courses by distance education.

RESULTS The importance to consider the inter-relations teacher/technology; teacher/teacher himself, teacher/digital society; teacher/methodology and teacher/students. The necessity to understand the teacher as a human being, to understand the tools, to have a critical position at the digital society, to re-elaborate methodologies, to valorize the students. To use appropriate language, not monologic, but dialogic to ensure interaction.

2007 Distance Education and its inter- relations: disruptions and implementations at teaching and learning process

RESULTS There are difficulties of teachers and students using different medias (audio, video, ICT) demanding them certain adaptation to the unexpected situations; New deal with the unknown; Necessity to learn to learn; Constant process of learning (continuous formation); Requirement to overcome the passive role of receptor to become protagonist of process; Individual and collective construction of knowledge; Emphasis on problematizing situations to promote criticality.

2008 Continuous Formation in virtual community: a space for reflection and collaboration

RESULTS The data showed that the participants used the intertext, making references to other readings, books, texts, building and rebuilding concepts; There was more interaction at face-to-face meetings than at the virtual environment, because of the little familiarity to the use of the ICT which generated a certain discomfort and noises at the communication; The necessity to promote closer ties among the participants in the sense to feel willing to participate; The importance to consider reason and emotion to enrich the relations in a continuous formation; the creation of interpersonnal ties; collaborative attitudes and receptivity.

2009 Conceptions of teachers about teaching and learning mediated by laptops at full time public primary schools: moments of collaborative reflections

RESULTS More than mere illustrtion at the educational context but a medium of mediation and production of knowledge and it must be explored at teacher formation; Necessity to problematize situations to promote reflections, collaboration and autonomy and also to valorize the individuality of each students; Necessity to risk at the educational context mediated by laptops in the sense of learning to learn continuously, of being opened to the new possibilities which emerge at the teaching and learning process to the formation of critical and participative citizens; The new possibilities of teaching and learning are related more than to the use of the new technologies, but to the attitude we assume: pedagogical practices, interpersonal relations, collaboration, reflection, interaction, different dimensions of teacher and students roles.

2010 A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH TO PROMOTE TEACHER’S LIFELONG TRAINING: THE COLLABORATIVE LEARNING MEDIATED BY DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

H ow teachers are being educated, how the collaborative aspect is being realized and how the ICT practices are being put in practice?

Interaction, Dialogue, Collaboration, Communities

Collaboration According to Freire (1993, p.9), men learn the reality by a net of collaboration, in which one helps one another to develop, at the same time he develops himself. Everybody learns together and in collaboration. Nobody trains anybody or nobody educates himself: men train themselves in communion, mediated by the perception of the world.

What is the role of the teacher toward these challenges?

Community Lave and Wenger (1991, p.98) state that “Community does not imply necessarily co- presence, a well-defined identifiable group, or socially visible boundaries”. Accordingly to them, “It does imply participation in an activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities”.

According to Wenger et al (2002), we can meet because we think it is valuable our interaction, we can spend time together because we can share information, insight, and advice and also learn together. We can develop personal relationships and establish ways of interacting and also a common sense of identity.

Can we change our familiar forms and routines of literacy education and of using technologies and get away from the syndrome of the new wine in old bottles and also from the 19 th century image seen into a contemporary classroom by the time travelers?

When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful. In such a community of learning there is no failure (Bell Hooks, 2010)

Learning? Ecology? Collaboration? Differences? Similarities? Community? Building and re-building conceptions?