Abstract:

Almost two years ago, in March 2012, the responsibleS of Gnoos, the managers of Didactalia.net, contacted me as professor of the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the University of Deusto (UD) (Spain) in order to work with them on the design of a card to be used to catalog and upload the educational resources that feed Didactalia.net. Didactalia.net is a K-12 global community and an storage place for teachers, students and parents to create, share and find open educational resources that has currently more than 55,000 items with semantic contexts and more than 30,000 people and organizations involved in it.

Since that moment, a colleague of mine (Naiara Bilbao) and I, both teachers from the Primary Education degree at the Faculty of Psychology and Education, designed a pedagogical features card based on the competence based learning model. The card was presented and shared with kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers during the event hold in May 2012 in La Rioja (Spain),and entitled Social Net to Educate: read, write, tell.

Once the card was designed and shared, we launched a pilot project with students from the third year of the Primary Education degree of the UD. Based on the pedagogical features card we previously designed, our students had to analyze different educational resources uploaded in Didactalia.net and focused to primary education level students, aged 6-12. The analyzed resources were cataloged as resources to be used in social sciences areas.

Since we started the pilot project two years ago (during 2012-2013 academic year), more than 160 students have taken part in it; and more than 160 educational resources have been analyzed and, consequently, re-defined and/or completed. Moreover, our students, divided in groups of 4, 5 or 6 people, have produced more than 35 new educational resources for primary school. Those resources have been developed based on the pedagogical features card we designed and to be used in social sciences areas.

It is also necessary to underline that this academic year, the students have also presented the resources they have elaborated through research posters adapted for this project. All the resources, the analyzed ones and the produced ones, have been uploaded to a google site also designed for the purpose.

The project has not finished yet as we have to re-adapt it based on new data, results and comments suggested by teachers from Didactalia.net and their responsibles, and obtained through discussion groups.

Keywords:

Educational resources, primary education, University of Deusto, Didactalia, net, innovation.