Revising the Framework of Knowledge Ecologies

Abstract

This chapter describes the Web of social software tools with its inhabitants as an evolving and ecological environment, discussing and elaborating the connectivist framework coined by George Siemens in his book Knowing Knowledge. This new perspective to ecological learning in social software environments resides on the ideas of Gibson’s and his followers approach to ecological psychology, the rising theory of embodied simulation and Lotman’s theory of cultural semiosis. In the empirical part of the chapter, we focus on the methods of investigating how social software systems become accommodated with their users forming learning spaces. Analysis discusses such ecologically defined spaces for individual and collaborative learning.