An International Portal Of Teache

An international portal of teacher education – An envisaged global project International Portal of Teacher Education (IPTE) - A proposal 

An educational portal is to be developed addressing the needs of worldwide teacher educators' community. It will provide various online community facilities and access to information resources for supporting collaboration, assistive learning and teaching practices.



The international portal aims to improve the flow of the pedagogical information among worldwide teacher educators, pedagogy instructors and researchers in related fields of teacher education.



One of the first and primary missions of the envisaged international portal will be the management, collection and dissemination of information in a web-based platform.



As part of its services to the worldwide community of teacher educators the IPTE PORTAL will be exploring the use of webbased online

collaboration

tools

to

support distributed

research groups spread worldwide in different countries and states.

The problem : information overload In the rapidly evolving research scene of today, a vast diversity of

information

is

becoming

electronically

available.

The

information environment is highly distributed, highly dynamic, and extremely heterogeneous. One of the great research challenges

posed

by

this

environment

is

finding

useful

information on teacher education programs and research.

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Dissemination of reliable and up-to-date teacher education research-based information is shaped by a perpetual cycle of time constraints and limited access to published resources. Established and resourceful journals are scattered around with no single entry of access.

The massive growth of information sources and items of information

on

the

Internet

led

to

the

creation

of

an

information overload, causing users to “get lost” in the sea of information and preventing them from seeing the entire picture of the emerging processes or directions. Metaphorically speaking, this is like a driver who receives driving data from dozens of indicators simultaneously instead of from one single integrative data indicator. Most teacher educators need nowadays a unified view of research developments and curriculum development.

The solution: an integrative pedagogical content portal Because of the dispersal of the pedagogical information among various factors and documenting systems, a global integrative pedagogical content portal in the field of teacher education should be set up as an international project. The aim of the portal is to cover pedagogical contents that are relevant to this field to be dealt with in greater depth.

In recent years, we have witnessed the development of information centers on the Internet whose objective is to present the users with a more complete picture of the information. These information centers are known as portals, and are sometimes called vertical portals or content portals. The portal is not simply

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a technological solution to the problem of the dispersal and fragmenting of information, but also a systematic perception that filters, distills, and unifies the information sources.

A portal can now be viewed as a thin layer that aggregates, integrates, personalises and presents information, to the users in a manner independent of browser platform or location The proposed international portal will complement the existing repositories by providing a unified user interface to the content. This kind of resource discovery is deemed most essential for the teacher educators who want to see all research findings and resources that are relevant and available for their subject.

The challenge: Imparting meaning to every particle of pedagogical information The objective of the envisaged international portal (IPTE PORTAL) is to permit the coordinated collection, processing, and distribution

of

information

sources

into

one

integrative

“reservoir”.

The purpose of the IPTE PORTAL is to help researchers and teacher educators manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in keeping abreast of new research.

The IPTE PORTAL will provide a framework of resources to support the monitoring the ongoing research in teacher education worldwide.

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The portal aims to improve the flow of the pedagogical information among worldwide teacher educators, pedagogy instructors and researchers in related fields of teacher education. 

The envisaged content portal should enable information sources

to

be

constructed.

In

other

words,

the

information will be consolidated according to defined templates, meaningful categories will be created, and contents

that

are

scattered

throughout

various

educational websites for teacher education will be channeled

into

a

unified

web-based

platform

according to defined and agreed categories.

The

envisaged

international

portal

will

also

publish

and

disseminate briefing papers on current, relevant topics in the teacher education and teacher training field. It will also distribute abstracts of research papers regarding beginning teacher's induction

programs

and

on-going

projects

obtained

from

worldwide academic journal and research sources.

One of the first and primary missions of the envisaged international portal will be the management, collection and dissemination of information.

There will be incentives to encourage more researchers and teacher

educators

to

deposit

data,

results,

reports

and

publications in a unified platform of global repositories available to them via the internet (via The IPTE PORTAL).

The IPTE PORTAL will set up an information gathering unit in order to gather the latest information on developments in teacher education, and related educational policy trends in

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various countries, as well as the monitoring of conferences papers.

Important topics will be analyzed and reorganized before release. Digest of various articles and research papers will be occasionally prepared and then distributed worldwide to the community of teacher educators and scholars.

Web-based online collaboration tools to support distributed research groups The concept of the IPTE PORTAL will be

evolving, and the

intention of this envisaged project is not to produce a complete solution , but rather to define and help to develop the common framework and to encourage teacher educators to work and exchange information within this framework.



The approach to be taken is based on an advanced technological architecture developed originally by the MOFET institute in Israel which is extensible and supports,

but

does

resources

needed

by

not

restrict,

individual

the

teacher

information educators

worldwide. As part of its services to the worldwide community of teacher educators the IPTE PORTAL will be exploring the use of webbased online collaboration tools to support distributed research groups spread worldwide in different countries and states. It is expected that during the second phase of the envisaged international project distributed research groups of teacher

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educators will eventually be using the platform of webbased online collaboration tools. The collaboration tools that will be introduced are online meeting organisers and the ability to share files between teacher educators. 

The IPTE PORTAL will eventually provide a rapidly deployed and easily adopted Web-based collaborative workspace that enables distributed teams to work together more efficiently.

The eRoom technological solution to be employed within the IPTE PORTAL will be flexible and easily configurable, allowing teacher

educators

worldwide

to

customize

and

use

their

collaborative workspaces to support a wide range of research processes. The online environment is to be available anywhere in the world at any time. All information will be stored in a central content repository where it can be linked and shared with other teacher educators. This phase will entail the development of a Community of Practice through the establishment and maintenance of teacher educators' networks of interested stakeholders that discuss, share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations to resolve methodological and operational difficulties and issues regarding the implementation of teacher education curriculum development programs.

Advantages

of

the

IPTE

PORTAL

online

community 

To build the capacity for worldwide researchers and teacher educators independently to take advantage of

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information and communications technologies that enable them to re-examine, rethink and represent teaching methods and learning, and to share the research findings and project outcomes in an effective and efficient way.



To

sustain

communities

of

practice

engaged

in

collaboratively improving teaching and student learning by building common areas to exchange knowledge and by building repositories for the representation of effective practice.

Overall, the IPTE Portal project will be of benefit to teacher educators by providing unified access to a range of support services and relevant information sources using advanced webbased technologies. The Portal will be structured in a modular fashion in order to support these outputs.

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APPENDIX A: A FLOW CHART OF THE ENVISAGED PROJECT

Users

Users

Users

Single access System

Portal Digital Repositories Shared web resources

User selected information resources

Distribution of articles abstracts

Teacher educators combined search engine

Distribution of research findings

Distribution of teacher education programs

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APPENDIX B:

Estimated budget for the IPTE Portal project:

Mode of operation

Establishment

of

Description

Costs

portal

services

$30,000 

Technical infrastructure and development



Installing Web servers

 Search facilities  Server-based relational database system Web-based CMS

 Development of Web-

$30,000

base tools and techniques to perform data access 

Capturing

metadata

(creator, subject, keywords, etc)

Information gathering

 Facilitating access to different

$12,000

databases

(online subscriptions)

Abstracting , Editing and



consistency check of the

Employing

Full

time

$50,000

editors (annually)

database and abstracts Distribution of materials



Distribution

of

the $20,000

database to the teacher educators worldwide Estimated total costs

$142,000

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