Only the collaborative platform that will allow students in the first and second cycle of basic education to create and share jobs among themselves is still used in the municipality of Porto, but the experience with students in Porto already brings the number of users to 18 thousand, including teachers , students and guardians.
The tests in Porto took place within the scope of the Crescer Interactivo project of the city council and Porto Digital and tried the use of a platform that allows the exchange of content, not only within the classroom, but between classes or schools.
Social character takes on special relevance at www.escolinhas.pt, which gives space for the use of tools such as wikis, blogs, chat or a social network, always adapted to the school environments they are going to.
The accumulated experience allowed us to realize that students value above all the possibility of being able to write about themselves, make drawings and communicate with other users through chat, explains one of those responsible for the Ademar Aguiar project. As a platform designed for children between the ages of 6 and 12, safety is also an important aspect, so all social features are restricted to registered accesses on the platform.
A total of 62 schools are already registered at escolinhas.pt, including all 54 schools in the first cycle of basic education in the municipality of Porto, which ended up allowing the group of researchers responsible for the project to test the community’s appetite with some scale. for the tool.
In a session scheduled for next Thursday, the researchers responsible for the project want to make the platform known among the registered users that already exist (in the schools involved) and start promoting the offer to other schools, through municipalities and parents’ associations. . The Ministry of Education would also be an interesting customer, admits Ademar Aguiar, but for now there are no contacts at that level.
The platform was developed by a professor and two students from the University of Porto, Ademar Aguiar; Mário Lopes and Nuno Baldaia. It also has the collaboration of designers Ana Ferreira and Ana Carvalho, also former students of the University of Porto.
Ademar Aguiar was the mastermind of the idea, which, as he told TeK, emerged as a personal joke about two years ago, yet the Magalhães had not yet started arriving at schools. The software engineering researcher has two daughters in elementary school and realized from his father’s experience and from his close relationship with the Wiki community that it would be interesting to create a tool that would allow students of these ages to use computers to expose their work and interact with each other , fostering a sense of community.
From a simple wiki for children, the project has evolved and in the scope of research work has ended up becoming the platform it is today. Along the way, the association with the Crescer Interactivo project was born, which aims to promote the use of ICT in three aspects, in the school community in the municipality of Porto: content, technological equipments of schools and collaboration. The researchers contributed with their work to fill this third part of the project, taking the tool to schools in the region. The implementation began in November 2008. Today the platform has over 18 thousand users, between 20 to 30 percent de facto users.
To support the growth of the idea, transformed into a product, Tecla Colorida was born, a FEUP / INESC Porto spin-off that will now try to expand the user community to more areas of the country.
Cristina A. Ferreira
