Educational Technologies. Analysis of Master dissertations carried out in Portugal

Acknowledging the importance scientific research may have in terms of the foundation, orientation and evaluation of the use of technologies in an educational context, it is only natural that there should also be greater knowledge on the research carried out in this particular field. This is what we set out to achieve in a recent conference held in Portugal on the theme Research in Education (1). Using the theme of the conference itself – Research in Education between 1960 and 2005 – as our basis, we decided to focus on what has actually been the object of research in our country within the framework of Educational Technology. We realised, at a very early stage, that there were hardly any studies in this field before Portuguese universities took on a more active role, nor in the field of educational technologies, particularly after the appearance of the first Masters courses at the University of Minho in 1987. Even though we are not aware of any in-depth study to characterise scientific research developed in Portugal in this area, several Portuguese authors have referred to this issue in some way or another (Abrantes, 1981, 1998; Blanco & Silva, 1993; Caldas, 2001; Fernandes, 1969;Ponte, 1994; Silva, 2000). On the other hand, since we have stated that a considerable part of research, in this particular field, focuses precisely on this academic qualification, we have decided to construct our analysis around this aspect. Therefore, in this article we present the result of the studies on Masters dissertations carried out in Portugal, with a view to furthering understanding of the studied themes, their theoretical and methodological frameworks, and to finding out where they are carried out, who does the research, what the collection techniques are and the type of data analysis used, just to mention some of the aspects around which our analysis is centred. This is an exploratory analysis within a restricted context, however, we hope that it may contribute to the acquisition of more profound knowledge regarding research practices in this specific field of Educational Sciences in Portugal

E-portfolio in education. Practices and reflections

The main activities of the digiFolio Project include: Building a common knowledge base supported by research work on the theory of portfolio usage; Paper and online publication of the results of the research work; Establishment of the pedagogical model for the training course; Analysis of the existing technological infrastructures for digital portfolio usage; Adjustment of the best tools and training course setup; Piloting and evidencing of the training course; Monitoring of the trainees' work by using a specific online teachers' support structure; International seminar. Website: http://digifolioseminar.org/?The present publication addresses the use of digital portfolios in educational context and it is one of the latest dissemination activities of the Digifolio project – Digital Portfolio as a strategy for teachers’ professional development, a COMENIUS 2.1 project which was carried out between 2005 and 2008. It involved several universities and teacher training institutions from five different European countries. The project, which main focus was the reflection on the potentialities of portfolios and digital technologies in the perspective of teachers’ professional development, came to its end with an international seminar which aimed at disseminating the work produced in the frame of a previous teachers training course, as well as allowing and welcoming the contribution of other education professionals with their practices and reflections on the above-mentioned thematic.Europeen Comissio

Technologies may help thinking

The objective of teachers’ personal and professional development is an excellent reason to reflect upon the innovation issues in education and a rare opportunity to implement the use of portfolios in the teaching practices. The most recent developments of digital technologies allow experiencing new organisational and knowledge building that state the diversity and multiplicity of purposes, both alone and as a group. From the reflection on these two aspects comes up the present proposal for the analysis and evaluation of the technologies which may easily be accessed by the educational community and may be used in the process of electronic portfolios building. In what teachers are concerned the use of portfolios can become a powerful means helping the change of the educational practices (Cardoso, Peixoto, Serrano and Moreira, 1996) if it is adopted as a metacognitive and reflexive strategy about teaching about them (Galvão, 2005). However there is a lack of information about what portfolios are, which technologies can be used, how they are prepared and how to take advantage of them. All these questions point out to the need of a specific training in this field. Accordingly, this chapter especially aims at helping teachers in that process, providing an analysis and evaluation technologies grid based on their pedagogical potentialities for the building of digital portfolios

The students' point of view about quality of educational multimedia software

The study reported here is part of an international project supported by EU (PEDACTICE - Educational Multimedia in Compulsory School: From Pedagogical Assessment to Product Assessment) and had as main goal to know the opinion and the perception of the Portuguese students about criteria of quality of educational multimedia software. In order to obtain elements on the student`s point of view about educational multimedia software, we decided to interview small groups of pupils who are involved in the work with multimedia materials and than gather, organize and analyse the information got. The sample of interviewed pupils can be considered as representative of the Lisbon schools attended by teachers and pupils very much interested in multimedia materials which these students use not only as an aid to learning activities but also as a support to home and school work. As main results of the study we can refer: a) the confirmation of the success of computers and multimedia among the young Portuguese student population, being manifest either in their attitudes or in the diversity of their experiences, including the technical mastery of informas; b) the acknowledgment, by the students, of the role of the school and of those of their teachers who had till now led the process; c) an unexpected emphasis attached by the students, mainly by the older ones, to the use of computer as a resource for school work which, till now, was done without it; and d) the rare use of the computer for supporting tasks of creative or autonomous nature.European Comissio

Managing personal learning environments: the voice of the students

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the kind of educational work to be done with higher education students (undergraduate) in order to encourage them to create and use personal learning environments (PLEs) as a strategy for learning (Attwell, 2007). Based on our current classroom work with students of the 2nd year of a degree in Education and mainly using the functionalities of the Ning system (Copyright © 2010 Ning, Inc.), as well as other tools available on the Internet, we tried to implement a strategy based not only on the presentation of content by the teacher, but also on the recognition of the importance of student’s leadership in the organisation and management of their own learning. Therefore, in addition to face-to-face lectures, we tried to extend the discussion outside the classroom walls using the different services offered by Ning, proposing to integrate the work done by students in their individual evaluation (50% of the final classification). At the end of the semester we observed evidence of a general difficulty felt by the students, particularly in terms of self-regulation and personal organisation. So we decided to try to understand the problem observed in depth. For the purpose of understanding the nature and the extent of these difficulties, we used a methodology focused on analysis of a questionnaire applied to the students about their perception of the difficulties in managing the learning process and about the strategies used for dealing with those difficulties. Although the students acknowledge that the development of the individual online portfolio in a PLE requires that, for the most part, largely they themselves have to get organised and manage of their own learning (Barrett, 2000; Attwell, 2007), one can see that they do not feel prepared for this, experiencing difficulties in personal organisation, time management and regular participation in the proposed activities. In strategic terms, they value the appraisals and/or suggestions given by the teachers, but do not adopt an attitude of reflection or interaction and sharing with others, as catered for by the platform and its functionalities

Lipschutz ulcers: uncommon diagnosis of vulvar ulcerations

Aetiological diagnosis of genital ulcers is still a challenge in clinical practice. The cause is mostly infectious, but it may otherwise be a presentation of a wide variety of pathologies, such as autoimmune (eg, Behçet’s disease), cancer or inflammatory processes. The Lipschütz ulcer is a non-sexually transmitted condition

An Evolutionary Analysis of Investment in Electricity Markets

Electricity markets are being liberalised and open to private competition in several countries. These liberalized electricity markets are very complex as the interactions between demand and supply are subject to several technicalities arising from the commodity being traded: electricity. One of these technicalities is that generators cannot store electricity: this fact implies that it needs to generate its production real-time. A second problem with this market are the different generation technologies used at different levels of demand, which implies that at different times of the day different generation costs are supported to meet demand: due to ramp-rate constraints, capacity available, and fixed and start-up costs. In this paper we analyze the issue of investment and the electricity system’s long-term security in an industry where a regulator controls the short-term prices, imposing a perfect competition outcome for “low†demand hours and a price cap at times where load is shed. We look at the following research questions: a) How does the oligopolistic structure of the market interact with the value of the different technologies? b) How do players define their investment strategies? c) How do the regulatory policies affect the investment in generation? Do they work similarly under perfect competition and oligopoly? d) Can markets invest enough capacity to ensure the long run security of the market? The main results of our analysis are following: 1. The impact of a given investment on the market price is independent of the player investing. 2. The impact of an investment on price is a function of the technology in which the investment takes place and of the cycle to which the price refers to. 3. The impact of price caps on the evolution of the market structure is non-linear, it cannot be too low or too high. 4. An oligopolistic electricity market fails to deliver the needed investment unless the regulators intervene. 5. The higher the reserve margin the higher the total investment. However, this instrument by itself was not able to provide the incentive needed to ensure the long-term security of the system, as in any of the experiments analyzed the peak demand is not completely satisfied. 6. Even a slight increase in demand, due to the reserve margin, leads to important changes on the relative value of the different technologies. 7. The main task of the regulatory authorities is to define a level of capacity payments that give the necessary incentive to investment, at the minimum cost: Capacity Payments are very important in shaping the generation structure. 8. Uncertainty reduces the value of Peak plants: this result clearly contradicts any common sense in these matters, as one would expect the presence of price uncertainty to be beneficial to Peak plants. The proportion invested in baseload plants increases with uncertainty of the energy price, decreasing the investment in shoulder plant.agent-based, electricity markets, evolution, investment, regulation, simulation