Which competences for students and teachers operating in the "connective" society?

It is still rare in schools that social software becomes part of didactics as a specific support of curricular activities. However its use in scholastic and training contexts cannot be ignored for long because there would be the risk of creating strong cognitive dissonances in students that would see the use of tools and processes in institutions that are no longer synchronized with those they use themselves in daily life and will use in future working contexts. Teachers must be aware of the added value of social software, that they should first use efficaciously in their daily Network activities outside the school to then introduce it in daily didactics. A suitable educative and instructive proposal could therefore attempt to integrate the formal and informal in a coherent way but with the aim of not stopping at a limited optic of compulsory school but rather opening up horizons of life-long learning and recognition of the importance of participating in communities of practice and learning in the course of life. In fact social software is increasingly proposed as an efficient tool which permits the sharing and storage of subjects, practices, signs and languages. It is a model that follows a participative approach to knowledge and is strictly linked to social constructivism (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989) (Jonassen, 2000) for which learning is mainly an active process and socially situated for resolving real problems. Also learning ecology (Siemens, 2006) is coming into its own, metaphor used specifically for representing alternative modalities where learning presides in the Network contexts. It is important therefore that teachers have new competences regarding the rational use of Web 2.0 software with the aim of recognizing and guiding on-line knowledge sharing processes, on one hand useful for one’s personal growth and professional updating and on the other, to stimulate the growth of these competences in students.