Europe is more democratic

Today the European Parliament has dismissed the directive of the European Commission allowing the 65 working hours per week. This is probably the most popular decisión taken by the European Parliament against the Commission and it means a huge step forward to consolidate democracy in the EU. Strasbourg the beautiful and historical city on the Rhine has projected its condition of crossroad of cultures over the Commisson and I’d like to defend to let it be the only seat of the European Parliament far enough from the bureaucracy and the lobbies of Brussels. It is good to let deputies decide in this wonderful seat.

Social Dynamics and social tinkering

Howard Rheingold was today speaking to the a group of researchers and lecturers of the Open University of Catalonia. The round table organized by the Unesco Chair in E-learning was very crowded and participants were really excited with the speaker and the topic of discussion.
Online Social Networks and elearning are part of the issues that interest most researchers here. Thus the discussion that followed the phantastic presentatoon of Howard Rheingold, had excellent contributions.
I had the impression that there was a consensus in the importance to convince students that social networks jean an oppprtinity to learn in a cooperative way and further to construct knowledge collectively. My questions pointed on the vision of the professor as a leader that works the dynamics of the group to make possible that each student reaches the expected level of knowledge.
However I  also agree with Howard Rheingold, as hi stated in his presentation, that our short experience in teaching through online social network tools suggests that we should incorporate some of the principles of social capital. I also believe that we should teach students to tinker in social networking. Students are often confused in adopting these new means. On the other side, many young students (sometimes called “Digital Natives”) are experts in using the Internet to cooperate and these are the users of these social networks for learning.