OnLIFE Education: the ecological dimension of digital learning architectures¹

ABSTRACT

The past generations of communication and interaction networks have started to extend connectivity to objects (internet of things), surfaces, and environments (sensors), thus creating interactive ecologies (the internet of everything), in which all the different entities (data, algorithms, software, things, territories, people) develop their actions and possibilities in dialogues and through each other. Such transformation determines the transition from the frontal and analog learning architectures to reticular and digital dimensions. The digitization of the world and the widespread connection enable the construction of networks and interactive and connective architectures, in which learning comes to be understood from an ecosystemic logic where human actors and several entities (which digitalization has given voice to) dialogue and, in a process of interdependence, build an intelligent ecology. From this context, emerges a new relational, ecological culture linked to indicators and criteria of sustainability, which allows us to speak of OnLIFE Education in a hyperconnected reality in which "real" and "virtual" merge, instigating institutions, teachers, and students to rethink the educational system as an ecosystem. The article, based on a reflection on the new planetary connection and network living, questions what problems and challenges this new reality poses for Education. It presents three interpretative approaches to the human-digital technology relationship in an educational context and ends with reflections on OnLIFE Education.

Keywords:
OnLIFE Education; Learning; Interactive Ecologies; Ecosystem; Hyperconnected Reality