Emerging Pedagogies in the Networked Knowledge Communities: Interweaving and Intersecting Global Communities in the 21st Century Global Village

Introduction

Ever since the Greeks, the world has changed very little until the twentieth century from the digital high-tech point of view. Digital technologies in the late twentieth century, and mainly in the twenty-first century, changed the global cultures in the way that people never imagined. So, digital technologies not only became a game changer, but played a significant role for global cultural, political, and academic epistemic shifts. Nonetheless, it is apparent that as technology is only a tool, it does not guarantee the cultural, political, and academic epistemic shifts spontaneously, but there should be a combination of cultures, people, and technologies to bring the changes; or we must bring technologies into an action for the global cultural and academic epistemic shifts and for global cultural transformations. So, the driving force of global cultural transformations is globalization, information communications and technology, and new media technologies. These forces inspire how we should prepare our students as well as global citizens for their future; how we should share and co/create information; and how we should circulate them across the networked communities in the context of twenty-first century networked world. This situation demonstrates that networked knowledge communities (NKCs) are changing research methodologies while inventing newer research inquiries to better address the needs and expectations of the twenty-first century global cultures and networked community members.

We currently live in the era facilitated by technologies in which new media technologies have become impetuses to transforming the traditionally considered giant world into a tiny-networked digital village. In the past, processes of information creation and dissemination was not only difficult, but it used to be much more hierarchical, i.e., people could not comment and contribute to other people’s websites and web spaces. Currently, the process of information sharing is on user’s fingertips in this digitally globalized village. For instance, when people create content and hit the button on their computing devices (smartphones, computers, and tablets), information disseminates within, as well as beyond, their networked communities in a wink across the world. Because of the potential of new media technologies, local cultures and institutions are shifting toward global cultures and global institutions by connecting to the crowd of global fellow citizens, global institutions, and networked cultures. So, the emergence of computers, digital writing, and digital communication have practically revealed how cloud computing not only changed the modes of information sharing, writing from a linear, print-based model to a dynamic, public, and interactive one, but also shifted the (traditional) ways of understanding cultures, people, and geopolitical locations. Conclusively, the advent of new media technologies and NKCs considerably transformed the modes and mediums of communication patterns in unpredictable ways.

This chapter discusses NKCs, digital technologies, and emerging pedagogies. Then, it examines the breath and depth of Web 2.0 tools, social networking sites, and interactive cloud spaces in relation to digitally globalized world. It further stresses how network communities and networked societies tend to blur the traditional concept of social, cultural, linguistic, and political dichotomies. After these discussions, it explores some sites of emerging pedagogies in network communities, especially in academic institutions, social institutions, and networked global communities. Finally, by showing some problems and concerns of digital technologies and networked knowledge communities in the context of twenty-first century cloud era, it concludes by offering some potential future directions. Overall, this chapter accentuates the process of networked collaboration, content creation, dissemination and consumption of knowledge in the network communities and facilitates how NKCs are impacting epistemic shifts. It reveals how Web 2.0 and social media, and global networked interaction are impacting the cultures across the world in the construction of emerging pedagogies and knowledge and the process of knowledge dissemination in NKCs. As my intended audiences are from across the world, I attempt to address basic concepts of digital technologies, digital theories, and practices in this chapter.