Utopias and Dystopias

There are many metaphors about the machines against the world since the technological era began.

In my opinion, all of this is to promote the ignorance about these and how to use them. It's about the power of the knowledge and the development of the world. Ignorance in the digital culture and the risk of the democracy the power it brings to us.

On other hand, it brings a risk because it means to be involved in a movement that has it's own life. But we don't have to forget that we are participants in this development. So, when authors said about the lost of control about the "machines and technology" we have to know that the humans are the brain in this movement. The fear comes to lost the control about the population.

In a mass media era, the control of population was easy. Television programmes, the press, education systems... All of them was programmed to send the same message.

Nowadays it has changed, and all the information has an anarchic system. The blogosphere has become more influential and there are more sources for research.

Also it brings the chance to create an open debate about everything, so for this reason we can cultivate our critical thinking and give the opportunity to our students to improve theirs.

It's time to put it to good use and start free education.

Advance organizers

There are too many paths open. I'm a beginner in mooc and all of this information everyday is too much to digest. I think that there is something really important" the prior knowledge concepts".

It's a evidence that all of us start in a diferent level to use the e-learning and the digital culture. I think that it is one of the challenges in the mooc's courses. All of us are going to learn and improve diferents techniques and some of us will learn faster than others, it is a fact.

But I will find really interested and really helpfully if the organizers download some instructions as a "prior knowledge" that we should know to can learn not the same faster but a proper following of the course. If not it take the risk that more than 30% of people give up for the all the information that they wouldn't manage.

I'm not sure about how the course is gonna be, but there are awesome things here that for me are a very high level to do yet. Although I really would like to do and to use, so for that reason, I'm asking for this kind of help. Even there are too many colleges in the group posting very helpful stuff.

David Ausubel talked about it. " I define advance organizers as introductory material at a higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness than the learning passage itself, and an overview as a summary presentation of the principal ideas in a passage that is not necessarily written at a higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness, but achieves its effect largely by the simple omission of specific detail (Ausubel, 1963,1968).

Expository organizers are used when the new learning material is completely unfamiliar, as determined by pretests, and attempts merely to provide inclusive subsumers that are both related to existing ideas in cognitive structure and to the more detailed material in the learning passage (Ausubel, 1960, 1963, 1968; Ausubel & Fitzgerald, 1962). Comparative organizers, on the other hand, are used

when the new learning material is relatively familiar or relatable to previously learned ideas. In this case the aim of the organizer is not only to provide ideational scaffolding for the specifics in the learning passage, but also to increase discriminability between the new ideas and the previously learned ideas by pointing out explicitly the principal similarities and differences between them (Ausubel, 1963,1968; Ausubel & Fitzgerald, 1961; Ausubel & Youssef, 1963; Fitzgerald & Ausubel, 1963)."

A general idea

I would like to expand my principal idea about this blog. It’s about the current education and the changes that it has suffered. We are an active part of this online movement and I think that is important to take it with responsibility.

In my opinion the E-Learning concept is the first step to change the paradigm of education. To build new spaces and to pull down the old institutions. It brings to us all the opportunity to make free education for everybody. The real freedom in contents, methods and learning.

There is some truth in that we have to learn how to unlearn old conceps, methods and visions of life in order to adapt with change. This is the most important and difficult step to change but must be embraced in order to progress.

The Educational Institutions as we know them are useless for the currently society. There are theories that we are still taught in our schools and colleges that aren’t successful or relevent anymore.

Our minds are an active construction of our vision of reality. Our minds are built from our experiences and we base our life from them.

I recommended reading some works from Piaget, Vygostky and John Dewey that can help us to reflect on these theories. They speak about; how to learn and how to construct our knowledge in a positive way.

In my opinion, E-Learning is the perfect tool to make these theories a possibility for everybody. This is because it gives free access to education and information allowing ourselves to develop and enhance critical thinking.

Hey

This is my first blog, I have been thinking about doing one for a long time now, so here goes.

In the first place, I must say apologies for my English (I’m still improving it ) and probably in some cases my Spanish thinking will come out.

I want to take advantage of the course and create a good blog, where I could express myself about my thoughts on education and the changes it should do.

I would like to say thanks in advance to all of you who have  participated in this place. Feel free to give me, your opinions and constructive criticisms.

Welcome!