Abstract

COSTA, Luciano Bedin da  and  SANTOS, Manuella Mattos dos. The mobilizing virtual spaces of the occupied schools in Porto Alegre: mutual support as the basis of collective intelligence. ETD [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.1, pp.49-72. ISSN 1676-2592.  https://doi.org/DOI10.20396/etd.v19i1.8647802.

This article analyzes the movement of school occupations through virtual spaces. On the period from may to june 2016, 41 state schools were occupied by the community in the city of Porto Alegre. This movement was an act of collective defiance against the decay and depreciation of public education by the State. Forty of the occupied schools utilized Facebook as a tool of organization and cooperation with, and propagation to, society. To measure the importance of the use of social networking in these movements, data from the pages of all involved schools was collected, as well as the number and quantity of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. These virtual spaces have a disseminative and viral character, rapidly spreading information to their users by direct means. As such, here we find a powerful information network that Pierre Lévy would refer to as ‘Collective Intelligence’, where the involved subjects restructure their relations and their learning methods. In these pages, students act according to their own whims, building horizontal relations with the virtual community, that through ‘shares’ and interactions benefit the maintenance and growth of the occupations. The exchanges of knowledge are held together by what Piotr Kropotkin calls ‘Mutual Support’, networks of spontaneous cooperation that ignore barriers and geographical limits. Well beyond a simple tool of communication, these virtual spaces become devices for the organization and empowerment of a collective political intelligence, just as vital as the actions coordinated by students inside the schools.

Keywords : Exercise of Citizenship; Mutual Learning; Political Education.

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