Share.TEC System Architecture

This paper presents the Share.TEC system architecture and the first system prototype. This description stresses on the main system components and underlying technologies, standards and protocols. The main system functionalities are following logically from the main use cases and user requirements. The system design allows a tight integration between data, which have been automatically harvested from various external repositories, and a representation of the ontology that describes all aspects of the teacher education domain. The proposed implementation relies on modern features such as searching a net of digital objects interconnected by custom-defined relations. A multicultural system which accommodates to the user preferences requires specific user interface. The dynamic approach for presenting the information to the user, based on the teacher education ontology, contributes to the flexibility of the system

Share.TEC Repository System

The Share.TEC system has the main goal to establish a highly visible and functional portal with advanced brokerage services that will provide personalised access to a wide-range of Teacher Education (TE) content. The heart of the Share.TEC system is the central repository, storing metadata about TE resources. In this paper we describe the design of the digital Share.TEC repository, providing the more flexible and powerful ways for representing Common Metadata Model (CMM) metadata records and objects from the Teacher Education Ontology (TEO), and ensuring the most efficient and comprehensive search and reasoning abilities, as the key factors for the success of the Share.TEC project. We describe the data models for representing CMM and TEO, as well as the processes ensuring their correct coexistence

COLLABORATIVE E-LEARNING

Abstract: The paper presents research carried out within WebLabs, a European project, where researchers, teachers and young students learn collaboratively in a technology enhanced environment. Experiences gained by the Bulgarian participants are discussed from an e-learning perspective. Key words: visual programming, web-reports, collaborative e-learning, multiple representations 1. THE WEBLABS PROJECT Recent educational research emphasizes on “knowledge put into functional use in a multitude of different situations and contexts ” [1]. Many educators are working in the filed of “new cultures of assignments”, “project-oriented work ” and are very interested in constructing environments in which the learners can actively work on a conceptual level [2]. This is especially true in the case of mathematics taught at junior high school level where the mathematical concepts are often “shadowed ” by the necessities of calculating, symbol manipulating by hand, drawing, etc. Restricting the math education to these technical skills creates a very twisted image of mathematics and the young learners can hardly experience the real spirit of mathematics as a research field. 2 Eugenia Sendova, Iliana Nikolova, George Gachev, Liliana Moneva To cultivate abilities of young learners to generate, test, play with ideas and to build a culture of communicating them to their peers from different countries is one of the fundamental goals of the WebLabs project [3]. The project aims at creating a virtual laboratory and a community of young learners, teachers and researchers exploring collaboratively mathematical and science phenomena. 1.1 The focus of WebLabs This is a 3 year EU-funded educational research project carried out b

WEBLABS: A Context for Exploring Mathematics, Informatics and Science through Virtual Collaboration

The paper presents research carried out within WebLabs, a European project, where researchers, teachers and young students learn collaboratively in a technology enhanced environment. Some exploratory activities in mathematics and informatics carried out by the Bulgarian team are illustrated and discussed