Abstract:

The urban societies have been experiencing a great revolution in the last decade. New devices and apps have been introduced in the day by day of people and changed completely the way of work, of fun and mainly the way of people to interact. The classroom has not stayed out of this revolution. Where before there was a chalkboard, pens, notebooks or papers and scissors, today we find smartboards, slide projectors, TVs and, much more recently and without asking teachers for permission, smartphones, that were introduced in this environments inside the students' pockets. The classrooms that before were closed spaces were transformed into open spaces for the world through the new technologies of information and communication. The walls of the classrooms have been shot down. A new reality of learning emerged from this process.

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is not immune to this revolution mainly because it has a scientific and technological base. The STEM education should pay attention to two issues:
a) for what world it is preparing the students?
b) In what world is preparing the students?

The first issue is harder because needs to establish future scenarios and this is not completely possible for a long term. The second issue refers to adapt the STEM education to actual stage of the technological society.

There are two types of technologies that teachers should pay attention:
a) those that are created to supply the needs of STEM environments, like smartboards, experimental kits, and educational apps;
b) those that enter into the STEM environments in the pocket of students without license of teachers, like the smartphones.

They are a cultural creation and shouldn't be kept out of classes. Both can be in dialog. This paper will be focusing on the role played by some devices and apps used in a STEM class and their relationship with the students.

In this case, it will intend to understand:
a) What is the role that these devices perform in the getting information process?
b) How is developed the interaction between human and non-human actors?
c) Where (websites) the students get information? What the quality of that information?
d) How the students link that information with a scientific issue? That information provides data to support an argumentation?

Using a learning strategy known as “Six Thinking Hats” (STH) it was the proposal for a group of 15 students a Socio-scientific Issue about the use of cellphones and their effect on human health. The students worked in collaboration using several devices and apps. All the activity was recorded by a video for posterior analysis. The images revealed the symbiosis of human and non-humans actors in the learning processes and how it was established the flow of information among them. The source of information was considered trustworthy but the students didn't get scientific data to base arguments. They used only fragments from stories from the press.

In this research was possible to mapping the collaboration's process of students working in the STEM environment. The images were captured by video and transcriptions were made for a map showing the two dimensions: the flow of information and the flow of devices. It was considered all actants presents in the process: students, the teacher, software, and devices.

Keywords:

Knowledge Networks, Collaborative Learning, STEM, Socioscientific Issues, Collective Intelligence.