Paper Example on Learning Processes and Virtual Communities: TED

Introduction

Knowledge is power is an influential proverb that states that knowledge is more powerful than that of physical strength and nothing can be attained without knowledge. The term knowledge is accepted to be the most important and a valuable resource that is implemented in an organization to have a consistent growth and to maintain their growth in a competitive and global market according to (Chen, Y. and Hew, K. F. 2015). From the last decade the perception of Knowledge management (KM) has been progressively adopted by various organization and different societies, one among these different method was the improvement of Knowledge sharing technique that has been acknowledged for the various prospects of knowledge sharing initiative. The term Knowledge sharing can be simply described as the interaction between two or more people and sharing something essential that sometime guide each other to lead their life.

TED is an international non-profit organization dedicated to "ideas worth spreading" and began as a four-day conference in California 26 years ago. TED has expanded throughout the world through the years thanks to its TEDx program, which is a program of local events, organized independently, that bring together an audience in an experience similar to TED. TED, which stands for "Technology, Entertainment and Design", is a non-profit organization dedicated to disseminating ideas that deserve to be told. It began as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, and thereafter, every year, the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to talk for practically 18 minutes (Salinas , 2003). They are very strict in the time the speaker takes, since they want their idea to be brief and concise, and not used to promote themselves, but to motivate others to do something that changes their environment for the better. Bill Gates, U2 Bonus, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Philippe Starck, Isabel Allende or the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are some of the names that TED has hosted at its conferences over the years. Unlike other papers, the TED conferences stand out for their brevity, originality and above all, because they awaken a feeling of wanting to change the world, since they are usually quite passionate talks.

All the videos of the TED and TEDx talks can be seen on the Internet and have a great popularity, and many of them count with millions of visits and are translated into dozens of languages, either from the web or from the specific free applications that they exist for smartphones. One of the most curious is Bill Gates' famous speech on malaria, in which in a moment of the talk, Gates decided to release a few mosquitoes in the auditorium. "There is no reason why only poor people should go through this experience" - he said jokingly, after clarifying that those mosquitoes were not infected. "Schools kill creativity" this is what Sir Ken Robinson said during his fun and inspiring talk that already has 15 million visits. "Children are not afraid of making mistakes. If you do not know, try. It does not mean that making mistakes is the same as being creative, but if you are not open to mistakes, you will never think of anything original "- he said in his talk. Candy Chang, a young artist from New Orleans, was going through difficult times: a person very close to her died suddenly and this made her seriously consider her life. Then he built a giant slate in which he read: "Before I die I want ..." and the response was overwhelming (Salinas , 2003). A young man from Malawi tells the moving story of how his life changed when he decided to improve his family situation with a homemade windmill to generate electricity. "I went to the library and started reading science books. I did not know much English but I looked at the drawings and diagrams. One of those books said that a windmill could pump water and generate electricity, a defense against the famine that we were going through at that time. "

A virtual community appears when a group of people, a real community, is professionals, students or a group with common hobbies, uses telematics to maintain and expand communication. The fact that the interaction can be carried out between physical persons but linked by telematic networks is what leads to talk about virtual communities. So in a virtual community:

People meet to intercommunicate through computers and networks, interacting continuously and following pre-established rules.

The exchange of information (formal and informal) and the flow of information within a virtual community are fundamental elements.

The existence of virtual communities among professionals for the exchange of ideas and experiences and the professional and personal development of its members has its origin in the great possibilities of socialization and personal exchange provided by the networks.

We can find many definitions (Rheingold, 1993), some of them limited to specific types of communities. For what interests us here, we can consider "virtual communities" as web-based environments that group together people related to a specific topic and who, in addition to the distribution lists (first node of the virtual community) share documents, and resources (Salinas , 2003). That is to say, they exploit the possibilities of communication tools on the Internet. Since the generalization of the Internet, communities of this type have been set up, forming first discussion groups around News or Distribution and discussion services of diverse topics or IRC, MOO's, etc. .; whose objective has always been to unite people around an issue of common interest. Obviously, these virtual communities will be so much more successful, the more they are linked to tasks, objectives or pursuing common interests together.

Among the key aspects when analyzing virtual communities, the availability of an information exchange network (formal and informal) and the flow of information within a virtual community are fundamental elements, and these depend on the following characteristics (Pazos, Perezi, Garcias and Salinas, 2001):

Accessibility, which comes to define the possibilities of intercommunication, and where mere technological availability is not enough.

Culture of participation, collaboration, acceptance of diversity and willingness to share, which condition the quality of community life, since they are key elements for the flow of information. If diversity and collaboration are not well received and are seen more as a threat than as an opportunity, the conditions of the community will be weak.

Skills available among members. The type of skills needed may be communication skills, information management and processing skills.

Relevant content: The relevance of the content, depending fundamentally on the contributions of community members, is closely related to the aspects that we have indicated as quality factors of the communities.

Learning Processes and Virtual Communities

It can be understood that when dealing with learning in virtual communities, we must necessarily attend to collaborative learning. If we focus on the teaching-learning processes that can be developed in virtual learning communities, whether they are group-oriented (collaborative learning among professionals, communities of practice, collaborative creation of materials and research projects, etc.), they should be oriented to objectives (learning in virtual training environments from constructivist perspectives, promoting interaction, participation, collaboration, etc.), the emphasis is currently on:

The importance of interactivi...