From Knowledge Transmission to Sign Sharing: Semiotic Web as a New Paradigm for Teaching and Learning in the Future Internet

In the 21 century, with the advent of ultra high-speed broadband networks (1Gb per second), the Internet will offer new opportunities for innovators to design qualitative services and applications. Indeed, the challenge of such e-services is not only on the technological aspects of Internet with new infrastructures and architectures to conceive. The reality is also on its human and multimedia content delivery, with innovative philosophies of communication to apply in this digital and virtual age. In the context of Teaching and Learning as a human-centered design approach, we propose a new paradigm for thinking the Web, called the Web of Signs, rather than the Web of things. It focuses on the process of making knowledge by sharing signs and significations (Semiotic Web), more than on knowledge transmission with intelligent object representations (Semantic Web). Sign management is the shift of paradigm for education with ICT (e-Education) that we have investigated in such domains as enhancing natural and cultural heritage. In this paper, we will present this concept and illustrate it with two examples issued from La Reunion Island projects in instrumental e-Learning (@-MUSE) and biodiversity informatics (IKBS). This Sign management method was experimented in the frame of our Living Lab in Teaching and Learning at University of Reunion Island.