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- DER in Portugal: state-of-the-art of the two major Repositories in Elementary and Secondary EducationPublication . Castro, Cornélia; Ferreira, Sérgio André; Andrade, AntónioIn the last decade, there has been an expansion of Repositories of Digital Educational Resources (DER), funded and stimulated by government authorities and non-profit institutions, in order to publish, collect, distribute and pre-serve DER. In this environment, inspired by the Open Content Movement, it is recognized the importance of the vast heri-tage of DER, produced by the collective intelligence, for pedagogical innovation. Following this trend, in Portugal, about three years ago, two repositories were created at the elementary and secondary education levels: Schools Portal, of Gov-ernment responsibility with a generalist vocation, covering the entire spectrum of the curriculum and the House of Sciences, headed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which is a private institution of public utility, and dedicated to the areas of natural and exact sciences. In this study the state of the art of these two repositories is presented once they are the ones most visible in Portugal in what concerns the main dimensions that interfere on their quality. The methodology of data col-lection was based on the analysis of the portals from the point of view of the producers and users of the DER of the reposi-tories. The main results and conclusions are presented and considerations about the factors that in the future may contribute to the sustainable improvement of some of the characteristics of the repositories covered in this study are stated.
- Digital educational resources repositories in lower and middle education in Portugal: quality criteria in the international contextPublication . Castro, Cornélia; Ferreira, Sérgio André; Andrade, AntónioThe thematic of Digital Educational Resources (DER) and digital educational repositories at primary and secondary education levels is of growing centrality in the educational themes in the international debate. In order to make it easier for teachers and students to find the best and relevant learning resources and to encourage teachers’ uptake of innovative materials and learning styles, authorities and/or companies in European countries have launched web based educational repositories. Following this trend, about two years ago, three major institutions in Portugal have launched their repositories: Portal das Escolas (ME), Casa das Ciências (FCG) and BOA (INESC-ID). After examining the state of the art of educational repositories in Europe, it was found that those three Portuguese repositories are not mentioned in recent European reports and so the study here presented seemed to be very relevant. This work aims to develop a descriptive and comparative study, in order to characterize the reality of the Portuguese repositories and compare it with European examples of good practices. To guide this investigation, the following question was theorized: “How are the Portuguese institutional repositories, for primary and secondary education levels, positioned in what concerns international quality criteria?” Our methodology design is a qualitative one and of type i) descriptive, as it is intended to characterize the main Portuguese institutional DER repositories for primary and secondary school education, aiming to assess the key dimensions that affect their quality and ii) comparative since it has in view comparing those repositories with reference European ones. In this sense, Lektion in Sweden and Scoilnet, Portal for Irish Education in Ireland are considered. The study was undertaken from the view of the DER producers and users. As a tool for data collection it was used a framework of analysis built on the Guía para la Evaluación de Repositorios Institucionales e Investigación (GERII), a joint publication of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and other organizations in the fields of Education, Science and Technology (Villar et al, 2010). The GERII guide includes a set of guidelines for the creation and evaluation of a repository, bringing together a battery of 31 evaluation criteria, distributed over seven dimensions that any repository must accomplish to meet quality and therefore was considered an excellent basis for our analysis. Comparing the three Portuguese repositories, target of this study, with two reference European repositories in order to contextualize the national reality in the international arena will stand for the Portuguese institutions that hold the repositories as an opportunity for improvement. Thus, Portuguese teachers will have an increased chance to access an eclectic collection of quality resources, in order to diversify their teaching strategies.