Portal ou porteira? Os professores e uma experiência de integração da internet no ensino fundamental por meio de um portal educativo

Abstract

Computers and Internet are cultural tools and, therefore, they are deeply inserted in our ways of producing, communicating and thinking. Digital networks, with their tools of communication, interaction and hipertextuality, represent a new intellectual technology. In education, the internet becomes more and more a supporting tool to the learning-teaching process, incorporating elements traditionally associated to distance learning and to the formal/traditional teaching. From this gathering, a hybrid teaching model comes to life, uniting distance and on-site moments, widening the classroom space beyond its physical boundaries. At the same time that it opens possibility fields, the use of the internet in school settings demands new methods and, mainly, teachers´ preparation. In this setting, the educational web portals come to sight and by reuniting all the resources of the digital networks and presenting a methodological proposal they try to replace internet use and the preparation of teachers, by means of showing a final and ready product. Among these portals, we approached the Educational Portal and its use by 7 de Setembro school in Fortaleza, Ceará. By means of a case study, we tried to follow the evolution of this relationship, trying to understand its methodology of action and of teacher preparation. Yet, we sought to give the teachers an opportunity so that they, as the main agents of the educational process, could tell how they see the Internet before the arrival of the Web Portal in the school system and their reactions and assessment about the Educational Portal. As a result of this analysis, we came to the preparation of a methodological proposal, by the teachers, to the work with the internet in Elementary School, based on the knowledge produced in the daily work with the digital networks through the Educational Portal