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Teaching Chemistry in a Social Learning Environment: Facing Drivers and Barriers

The Portuguese Technological Plan for Education (TPE) was established to modernize schools and to consolidate the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in order to promote the academic success of students and allow schools to be transformed into technological enriched environments through a significant learning and knowledge building in a participatory, collaborative and sharing logic. With this work we aimed to establish dynamical interactions students-content- teacher in order to overcome a diagnosed students' lack of effort towards studying curriculum chemistry content. Our methodology design is a theoretical and descriptive one, carried out in a secondary school during the 2009/2010 school year, in order to answer the question "How to improve the engagement of K-12 students in chemistry classes?". Students, gathered in small groups were asked to create digital learning resources (DLR) during classes. The teacher assumed the role of the supervisor, coacher and facilitator of every task that had to be taken or chosen by the students. To enhance interaction student-student and student-teacher, a Twitter account and a Ning site were created for the class. Both supported the Social Learning Environment (SLE) that was intended to be created. The data collected led us to satisfactory results in what concerns the goals of the study. The affordances and constraints of SLE as an open architecture that has potential to facilitate collaborative learning are delineated. Future work should focus on mechanisms that allow assessment both of the methodology used and the students' generated content in order to improve students' learning in this environment.