Análise do potencial da utilização do site de rede social facebook para educação ambiental

Abstract

An Environmental Education (EE) must allow the individual to reflect on his or her actions acts in the environment, it should make the path lead to a more just world. Because Environmental Education is an instrument of knowledge construction, it is a possible way to change attitudes. possible way to change attitudes. This paper aims to analyze the potential of using the social networking site Facebook. social networking site Facebook. It was developed in the Faculty of Education (FaE) at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), in Brazil - Rio Grande do Sul-City of Pelotas. The Faculty of Education at the Federal University of Pelotas has been adopting the use of Web 2.0 tools as pedagogical tools. As an example of this, in some courses taught at the school, private groups are created on the social networking site social networking site Facebook are created with the purpose of opening spaces so that power relations can be shared among teachers and students. power relations are shared between teachers and students so that they have the discretion to insert pedagogical to insert pedagogical material, activities, themes and share information. However, this site has not been explored for Environmental Education. This study is a qualitative research, based on the virtual ethnography approach. A choice of this approach was for its importance of involving the author of the research in the natural environment of the research. This research used the non-probability sampling method sampling method and the type of sample was by accessibility or convenience. The corpus selected for analysis is participant observation, as a primary research technique main technique of the research and the online questionnaire, as an auxiliary resource of the research. Therefore a "UFPel Environmental Education" Page was created for environmental awareness and a "UFPel Environmentally Healthy" Group as a collaborative learning space on environmental issues. The members participating in the page as well as in the group were students and professors from the Faculty of Education at the Federal University of Pelotas. The results obtained through participant observation and through the online questionnaire showed that Web 2.0 tools demand new educational methods, and the social networking site Facebook is a tool that facilitates the learning process and stimulates collaboration and interaction among the participants. Therefore, the social networking site Facebook can be used as a new support medium for Environmental Education.