RENEWABLE ENERGY VIDEO-SHARING EDUCATIONAL TOOL

In technical studies areas, visits to industrial facilities have an uncontested educational interest, because they provide students a realistic view of production processes and industrial environments with which they will be faced with in their future professional development. Since the practical viewpoint, carrying out these visits is frequently limited by the availability of resources, such as time or money as well as by the difficulties related to the possibility of obtaining permissions. These reasons make their access limited only to a reduced percentage of the total of students enrolled.

The tool presented here, proposed to move the practical activities into the classroom through the development of audiovisual materials related to the different ways of getting energy from renewable sources, as well as the equipment used for this task.
This graphical material is going to be used as a support in subjects related to renewable energies in general and Photovoltaic Solar energy in particular. The theoretical contents of these subjects require a practical vision for a better understanding of its final application. These virtual and practical activities allow the student become familiar with the industrial reality in these types of energy sources, and directly observe the implementation of the processes previously exposed in classroom lectures.
Trying to solve the appreciated issue, a website (http:/voltio.ujaen.es/renewenergyvs) and a voutube video channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/renewenergyvs) have been developed, implemented and customized, where different links to multimedia material related to the process of getting energy from renewable sources, can be found. These educational tools are bringing the technological reality closer, in a simple, interactive, free and accessible way from any device with internet connection.

This solution based on videocast (digital media file as a combination of audio and video), also offers online access on demand to conferences by experts, which are otherwise impossible to take place in the teaching program of the subject due to a lack of availability of space and time.

This educational tool provides interesting technical advantages: use flexibility and accessibility in time, place and number of users, fast diffusion among young people. Apart from that it allows the visualization of the contents during the same period of teaching time, in order to reinforce the previously contents assimilated using real examples and applications that enable students to get to know the basic principles of how to design and implement what they learn in class.