Over 500,000 teachers and students use the Virtual School, which turns 18 today.

More than 500,000 users, including 100,000 teachers, use the resources of the Porto Editora Virtual School, which is celebrating its 18th anniversary this Wednesday, but “the bulk” are using them to play analog models, “which is a problem,” according to one researcher. .

“The problem was not only the lack of digital equipment, but above all how most teachers understand the use of digital technologies in pedagogy,” defends Marco Bento, a researcher in the field of educational technologies.

The Virtual School, launched in 2005, is a platform that brings together thousands of pedagogical materials, allowing, in the case of students, knowledge assessment as well as a learning experience focused on individual and offline learning.

In the field of learning support, it also offers a set of learning resources such as animations, didactic games or immersive virtual visits that allow teachers to teach, set tasks and track results, among other things.

There is also an institutional aspect dedicated to schools, municipalities, institutions or regional secretariats such as Madeira and the Azores. In Madeira, students in grades 5-8 and part of grades 10 already use only digital textbooks, and in the Azores the same thing is happening with students in grades 5-8.

“On the mainland, the transition to digital is carried out on the basis of a pilot project covering 68 schools. [em todo o país] and about 12,000 students, and in fact they also benefit from the digital guides in the Virtual School and all the resources, whether teachers or students,” explained Luce Rui Pacheco, director of the multimedia center at Porto Editora.

Analyzing the use of digital technologies in teaching in Portugal, education technology researcher Marco Bento, heard by Lusa, said that teachers “basically understand [o digital] as a replica of analog models”, similar to what happened during the quarantine imposed to stop the covid-19 pandemic.

For the coordinator of the Supertabi Maia project, whose main goal is to transform the pedagogical practices of teaching and learning to read using mobile devices, “machines are at the center of attention”, according to the Digital Transition Action Plan. since 2021 and which has not reached the entire country equally, he points out.

According to a professor at the School of Education of Coimbra, digital technologies should serve to “learn more and better”, and not in the logic of simple motivation.

In her second year of MA in Early Childhood Education and 1st Cycle of Basic Education, as well as an internship at Pena Primary School and Kindergarten in Madalena, Vila Nova de Gaia, Catarina Pinto understands that “technology in education is innovating traditional teaching methods that are now obsolete,” the 23-year-old teacher said in statements to Luce.

“There has to be a shift in consciousness, learning. I believe that there are many colleagues who want to, but do not know how to do it. I, once a student and now a teacher, can understand that if I used it in my time, I would understand that some content needs to be improved,” emphasized Katarina, who today uses games and games as a teacher. videos provided by the platform to reinforce knowledge or introduce new content.

Created by Porto Editora in 2005, the platform currently has about 500,000 users “from practically all public and private schools on the mainland and in the autonomous regions, including more than 100,000 teachers who used its resources for more than 3 years during the 2021/2022 academic year .5 million hours.