The intertwining of human and technological in a digital native community

Abstract

Unprecedented learning opportunities are offered by the Web 2.0 tools development and dissemination. Although many of those applications have not been developed for learning purposes, they are contributing to spread a culture of collaboration and to provide virtual spaces to exchange information, ‘know-how’ and knowledge. As part of an ongoing study on web-based informal learning, the research preliminary findings show that the increasing pervasiveness of technology into daily life is not only engendering novel social configurations, but also digital practices. So far, technology, in the instructional design, has been commonly considered as a subsidiary means akin to a simple blackboard, whilst the applications functionalities are allowing and determining new learning perspectives. It can be thorny to advocate the mutual influence of human and technological facets on the basis of a limited research, nevertheless the work suggests a further investigation of the online communities and groupings as a recent object of inquiry in which human and technological aspects are originally intertwined.