Abstract:

Networking in a cooperative way may promote information exchanges and stimulate the production of knowledge and the dissemination of technologies. It can also be useful to plan for changes and to integrate people and organizations. Castells (2000) defines networks as a set of interconnected nodes, starting from the concept that a node is the point at which a curve intersects. In addition, Castells (2000) characterizes a networked social structure as open, highly dynamic and susceptible to innovation without affecting its equilibrium.

Bearing these concepts in mind, in October 2018 Sesc launched Rede.S – Rede de Educação Sesc – a virtual platform for content sharing based on the principle of collaboration. Sesc – Social Service of Commerce – is a private, nonprofit institution operating in all segments of Basic Education in 213 schools in Brazil. The organization hopes that the platform will be used to connect schools and educators and give them the opportunity to share their best practices and knowledge.

Thus, Rede.S will provide a collaborative space that may foster a new model of institutional dialogue and continuing education. It will highlight and multiply the diversity of practices and educational activities carried out in Sesc schools throughout the country. It also hopes to align national and regional strategies by valuing diversity and the exchange of educational practices carried out by Sesc educators all over the country. Similar to a social network, Rede.S contains a timeline and a messenger applet wherewith educators can communicate with each other in real time.

The platform has the following main objectives:
a) to gather diverse experiences and innovative teaching methods promoted by Sesc schools;
b) to broaden the knowledge generated by the Institution in the educational field;
c) to enable contact among Sesc educators with a view to exchanging practices and building a virtual community;
d) to offer the user multiple search possibilities;
e) to encourage the permanent training of teachers;
f) to offer personalized content adapted to the users' interest profile; and finally,
g) to give Sesc schools the space to share their projects and initiatives.

So far, we have observed that Rede.S has been contributing meaningfully to the exchange of information inside the institution and to the improvement of educators’ practices. In order to produce the contents to share, educators have been noticing the importance of managing their practices as well as monitoring and systematizing the evaluation of their activities. Besides that, school managers have been using the platform as a tool to stimulate their educators and highlighting their best practices. In this way, Rede.S has been giving visibility to engaged teachers and has encouraged other teachers to be engaged in similar ways.

After ten months, we have over 150 projects shared by educators inside the platform. Our next step is to publish an E-book by the end of 2019, displaying the best practices shared so far. We also have plans to gamify the platform by giving users badges and ranking out the best collaborators (awarding our top three educators). We will be using gamification to stimulate the use of the platform and to promote the engagement of its users.

Keywords:

Social network, community, virtual, teacher, technology.