E-Learning Training for Spanish Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) Teachers to Use SDI as an ICT Educational Resource

Abstract

The fast development of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their progressive implementation in the educational field have led to significant changes in teaching and learning methodologies and have made the use of new teaching resources in the classroom a top priority. ICT offer a huge amount of educational resources. In this context Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) is available at all levels (from global to local) and presents different possibilities to be used as ICT teaching resources. However, the use of SDI in Spanish Compulsory Secondary Education (‘Educación Secundaria Obligatoria’ – ESO) requires teachers to be trained and acquainted with the features and applications of this technological tool. In order to provide the adequate teacher training, both theoretical and practical, three e-learning courses have been designed, developed and implemented for three different areas of Spanish ESO (Social Sciences, Sciences of Nature and Technology). In these courses we propose the use of SDI as ICT teaching resources. The courses present a theoretical lesson which includes: (a) an overview and the most important concepts in SDI and (b) methodological proposals which approach ESO curricula using SDI as a teaching resource. In this paper we present the implementation and evaluation stages, showing the results of the first edition of the courses in which teachers from several Latin American countries took part. These results have enabled us to obtain information about the opinion of secondary teachers regarding the possibility of using SDI to teach Social Sciences, Sciences of Nature and Technology curricula