EdReNe – Current state of educational repositories – national overview

The Portuguese Ministry of Education has recently developed as educational content repository – Portal das Escolas - at www.portaldasescolas.pt. It includes a database of their own contents and external links to other educational resources. The repository includes a search engine and respects international standards of metadata and cataloging.

LeYa, also one of the most important Portuguese study book publisher, developed Platform 20 - http://www.20.e-leya.com/entrada/plataforma.html - that includes a diversified set of educational resources such as digital textbooks, videos, animations, games and interactive tests.

I-Zone Interactive Media is another important portuguese player in educational multimedia content. I-Zone Interactive Media is the result of a merge between a publisher, a design enterprise, an Internet solutions company and a digital educational contents company, bringing an enormous potential to recreate content, transforming concepts into applications, making ergonomic and interactive contents. I-zone Interactive Media develops new learning environments, multimedia contents, kindergarten and elementary educational products, digital and paper educational textbooks, e-learning contents, interactive games and videos, simulations, Web Design, 2D and 3D illustrations, Virtual Communities and contents for mobile networks.

Izone currently has a project of contents for the 1st Grade – “Escola da Malta” - www.escoladamalta.pt - which acts as a virtual school where pupils can choose the school year, subject (Portuguese, mathematics, social studies) and the lesson they want to attend, learning the corresponding content through interactive multimedia content such as animations, games, exercises, videos and music. Participation data is stored and associated to the pupil’s profile. It also has tools to allow students to create their own content - drawings, texts, comic books stories. Contents are validated by a teacher and available in a gallery.

Another project from Izone is Cidade da Malta, www.cidadedamalta.pt/
A virtual community for children with contents in diferent subjects like citizenship, environment, arts, health and sports, media, science and technology, spirituality.

Izone is now working to develop a more complete project that includes all the content in a repository, provided with new complementary tools with unprecedented use in multimedia education.

One project involves creating a virtual world where each user is represented by an avatar and moves in a scenario where it can access contents on an exploratory adventure. In this scenario each user interacts with other users and participates in challenges that imply the acquisition of knowledge of the available contents.

Another project – “Affective Mouse”- is the development of a repository based on Affective Computing. The project started with the need to know which emotions students have when they access learning contents, and how emotions can influence the result of the learning process.

“TV Formação Mobile” is another project from Izone that intends to produce, develop and distribute content through web and mobile phones.

"Contents of Next Generation" (CNG), is a project being developed by a consortium of I-Zone Interactive Media, I-Zone Knowledge Systems, University of Aveiro, MSFT, GCC Association / ZGDV, Different Game, INESC Porto - Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering of Porto and University of Porto - Faculty of Engineering. It aims to introduce the use of immersive environments as an innovative way of providing appealing educational content, and enjoying the surroundings of the 3D audio and video.

Some international projects have a portuguese version, with new local content.

One example is Promethean Planet - http://www1.prometheanplanet.com/pt. Created by teachers, for teachers, Promethean Planet is a place to create and share lessons (flipcharts) to use in Interactive whiteboard. The Portuguese portal has an extensive library, with more than 2000 lessons in Portuguese, classified from pre-school to higher education.

Sapo Scratch - http://kids.sapo.pt/scratch is another example. Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create interactive stories, games and animations - and share creations through websites. Portuguese version has more than 2000 scratch content, created by students and teachers for multiple subjects.

Skoool - http://www.skoool.pt - skoool is an educational tool created by Intel ® Innovation Centre to be used by teachers and students in subjects like math and science.Town Hall of Castelo Branco, in partnership with the University of Coimbra are developing quality content for the Portuguese version. Skoool Portugal is a service that offers new interactive contents with the support of audio narrations, audio-visual simulations, self-assessment tests. All educational content of skoool Portugal was designed for use on PCs, laptops, PDAs and advanced mobile phones.

• the technological update of all Basic and Secondary schools and;
• the promotion of the integration and widespread use of ICT in teaching, learning and school administration

• creation;
• evaluation and certification;
• deployment and organisation;
• educational use/curriculum integration.

• it will hold information about commercial and non-commercial DLRs but may also include non-commercial DLRs themselves;
• users will be able to customise their repository;
• statistics will include the identification of popular functions, user surveys and the characterisation of user types (registered users);
• the system is intended to be user-friendly;
• it revolves around a strong notion of user community; however, it is still too soon to know what the response will be.

General governmental initiatives. Museums, archives and libraries providing access to their resources.

Biblioteca Nacional Digital - with 20,000 documents.

DGEMN - With about 2.5 terabits of information, the Architectural Heritage Information System holds the largest online archive on architecture, engineering and urban planning, with 200,000 drawings, 340,000 photographs and 10,000,000 pages of text.

Resources in Portuguese museums - In matriznet you can find more than 30,000 objects and 45,000 images from museum's collections.

Associations/universities initiatives - (e.g. an initiative to put extra focus on mathematics to influence the students’ choice of education).

GAVE - 1000 mathematics resources 9º year.

APP

Biblioteca do Conhecimento Online http://b-on.pt - provides unlimited and permanent access to research institutions and higher education to full texts of over 22,000 international journals and 18,000 e-books.

Private/business

Microsoft has signed an agreement with 4 ministries in Portugal. Innovative teachers’ project is one of the results. http://www.professoresinovadores.com.pt. The teachers get software etc. and a diploma "Innovative teachers" by Microsoft.

Some portuguese websites offer a database of educational resources to specific areas. Here are some examples:

Science

• Mocho http://www.mocho.pt - Site for science education and scientific culture. Provides its own content like 3D models, videos, protocols, remote access to laboratories, tests and quizzes. It has links to useful web resources useful for various sciences. Standards: Web, Flash, WRL, JPG.
• Biorede - http://www.biorede.pt - Portal dedicated to various themes of Natural Sciences.
• Casa das Ciências - http://www.casadasciencias.org - Portal for teachers that provides a database of science resources, responsibility of the Gulbenkian Foundation.

Environment

• Centro de recursos virtual de educação ambiental - http://www.apena.rcts.pt/aproximar/ambiente - Database with many resources for environmental education.

Math

• Matemática ao Virar da Esquina - http://www.prof2000.pt/users/pjca - Page with tests, simulations, courseware and other resources dedicated to math. Standards: Web, PDF, Microsoft Office, Java, Flash, Hot Potatoes.
• Geométricas http://www.geometricas.net Webpage with Flash animations about geometric figures

History

• História de Portugal http://www.ribatejo.com/hp Webpage with learning modules on the History of Portugal, specially aimed at students of the 2º CEB. Contains stories about the history, summaries of topics, games and links.

Study help

• Saber Estudar - http://www.prof2000.pt/users/maceira/saber_estudar - Hot Potatoes exercises for diferent subjects.
• Resumos - http://www.resumos.net - Provides summaries of diferent subjects from. 5th to 12th grades, as well as all national tests performed by students of the 9th, 11th and 12th grades.
• Exames - http://www.exames.org - Database of tests and notes, to help to access to higher education. It has summaries of various subjects for students. Type of resources - Summaries, notes, presentations, tests, in word and pdf.

For teachers

• Netprof - http://www.netprof.pt/netprof/servlet/index?TemaID=NP0 - Teachers’ Club on the Internet, with resources for teaching in various subjects.
• Baú do Professor - http://www.baudoprofessor.com - Database of resources for various subjects.

For children

• Eu sei - http://nonio.eses.pt/qi - Activities for interactive whiteboards for children.
• Ludomedia - http://www.ludomedia.pt/recursos_2.php?menu=5&submenu=0 - Online digital resources made available by Ludomedia.

1. Competence Centres are local structures, comprising Universities, Schools of Education, associations of Teacher Training Centres, Teacher Associations. They train and support schools and teachers in the use of ICT. They also undertake research and help define national policies.