OPEN SCIENCE RESOURCES

A large amount of digital science education content already exists in the form of science museum collections and digital repositories. This large amount of digital science content has the potential to support technology-enhanced science education. However, science education teachers are lacking the time to investigate the potential educational added-value of the huge amount of digital resources typically returned though web search engines. An important factor, in order to make search and retrieval of science educational content more efficient is the quality and quantity of educational metadata associated with these resources. In general, the commonly accepted way to describe educational resources is the IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM) Standard. This training course aims first to develop science education teachers’ and trainers’ skills in using the deployed technologies in modes and settings as diverse as a physical museum visit, a virtual tour and surfing over the web and then, to get familiar with specific issues related to their application to technology-enhanced science education. The training course will provide European Science Education teachers/trainers with an introduction to social tagging learning objects, educational metadata and learning objects repositories, together with hands-on experiences on practical approaches and tools that are commonly used to support the learning object paradigm. Furthermore, it will focus on issues of particular interest in applying the learning objects paradigm in technology-enhanced science education, such as the description of science curriculum related characteristics of science education resources. To this end, the proposed training course is anticipated to facilitate European teachers and trainers in finding a way that will allow for integration of educational resources of the science centers and museums to the science curriculum.