The selection of the I-CLEEN resources

The resources you find in the I-CLEEN database are the result of a selection process elaborated by the editorial staff.

Both the stages and the criteria ruling the selection process were established during the preparation of the project that involved us for the two-year period 2008-10. We summarized those in one paper called "I-CLEEN Gateway Resources Admission Policy" that we will publish in autumn 2010.

These criteria are referable to two main kinds:

1. SCIENTIFIC AUTHORITY

The editorial staff is exclusively composed by a team of professional teachers with a decade-long experience and supported by some researchers of the Tridentine Museum of Trento and other research institutes. The scientific authority of each resource that we choose to include in the database is valued considering:

• the judgement expressed by  researchers specifically consulted about the subject;
• Some studies carried out in the field "Criteria for the evaluation of information" and adopted by reference cultural institutions, such as the Cornell University's Library.

All the resources you can find in the database have been the object of this kind of analysis, both the ones we ourselves created and the ones which were just proposed by recommendation. We are aware of the difficulties implied by the strict fulfilment of this property, most of all for the projects featured by the collaboration, such as I-CLEEN. We are also aware of the possibility to make mistakes. That is also why this aspect was deeply considered while planning the project, accurately studying some initiatives of assistance to the realization of information gateways, the same kind as the I-CLEEN project's database (see also the "Database" page).

In the end, we remark that every notification, every critique and every contribution will be gladly accepted.

2. INTERACTIVE EDUCATION AND WEARABILITY

Some scientific inquiries about the world of school enlightened that the model of a traditional lesson, the transmissive one, is indeed the most widely used by teachers, but it also suffers from a serious lack of efficacy. This phenomenon turns into a progressive decline in terms of attention and motivation of the students and year after year has proved to be particularly deleterious in the education of scientific subjects.

Many teachers react to this trend realizing  home-made lessons which force the students to an higher level of interaction, using several tools and techniques, such as: the use of simulators and data of scientific researches, laboratory lessons, several kinds of inquiring approaches, cooperative lessons, use of interactive animations.

The I-CLEEN project is specifically addressed to the teachers undertaking the preparation of these lessons, that often turns out to be extremely hard as far as timing is concerned. We intend to offer them a sharing tool with which they can find (and share) inquiring lessons  ready to be used, but also any resource useful to speed up their ideation and realization.

We chose to call this feature "wearability", meaning the ability of a resource - even if "worn" by a teacher or another - to keep its benefit to make spend less time in preparing a lesson.