É ponto assente a importância das pesquisas científicas ao longo dos séculos com as transformações promovidas pelo homem em pequena e grande escala. No entanto, historiadores afirmam que a 1ª Revolução Industrial foi a alava nca impulsionadora para o avanço tecnológico da humanidade, ocorrida na Inglaterra na metade do século XVIII com o surgimento da máquina a vapor e a produção têxtil. Como é sabido, posteriormente, tivemos a 2ª Revolução Industrial na metade do século XIX e XX que possibilitou à sociedade avanços na direção das telecomunicações, viação e aviação. A 3ª Revolução Industrial revelou-se após a 2ª Guerra Mundial como reconhecimento efetivo do avanço com o aperfeiçoamento na área da informática e da internet. Neste seguimento, há o crescimento cada vez maior da investigação científica e o apoio com investimentos financeiros às Universidades. Assim o crescimento em pesquisas nas áreas das Ciências e Tecnologias emergiu devido aos desafios sócio-económicos, desencadeados pelo avanço tecnológico. Como consequência e de acordo com Santos (2003), “o papel dos pesquisadores voltou a destacar-se, não só pela sua capacidade de equacionar problemas científicos e desenvolver soluções como de propor e validar tais indicadores, definindo seus alcances e limitações” (p.23). (...)

Based on the potential of interactive communication and decentralized Internet, the increased accessibility of spaces for readers to post comments in the online press has sparked debate about its contribution to counter the tendency, as shown by the modern society, in the exercise of an active citizenship. Given this phenomenon, this article aims at analyzing and discussing evidences of this possibility in comments published in the Education section of the online newspaper Publico.pt , taking as a reference the deliberative theory. Sustained in techniques of content analysis to a corpus of 294 comments, regarding 9 news from the Education section, the results suggest that although the commentators do not intend to build consensus around their comments, or to agree with the comments of others, they are interested in expressing and sharing their opinions, arguments and points of view, even if they do it anonymously. The analysis of the published comments concluded that deliberation we found in this online space played a public and collective role, since commentators really discuss common problems in the public sphere, although it doesn’t make the required transformation in the participants’ opinion.

Sir Ken Robinson became an internationally recognized speaker about education and creativity. Robinson's first TED Talk has been widely seen around the Web since its release in June 2006. His book "The Element " has been translated in 21 countries. He argues that education systems, which are training people to become good workers instead of educating creative thinkers, ends destroying our natural human talents. Reviewing literature on contemporary education theories as well as two examples close to Robinson’s ideas (Summerhill and Reggio Emilia schools) helped framing this study. Applying qualitative content analysis as an interpretation method in case study research allowed us to identify some implicit ideas and education theories in his book and conference "The Element " posted on YouTube ™ and relating them to the public comments on that Internet platform. Results show that most of the reviews are positive and supporting his ideas as well as his communication skills. Although on the path of others before him advocating a more child-centered education, Robinson never turns clear his alternative education system and mechanisms to perform better.

The new Orthographic Agreement does not yet gather consensus among the members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP). Considering this scenario, this study has analyzed twelve interviews (videos from the Youtube site and the online journal “O País”) made with Portuguese language speakers from Portugal, Brazil and Mozambique, with the objective of identifying which topics of the official Orthographic Agreement document generate more concern. Furthermore, this study intends to understand which motives are behind the opposition to the Agreement of 1990. Inspired by an interpretive paradigm the results revealed that the position of Brazilian Subjects relating to the points of the official document, differ in relation to points made by the Portugueses and Mozambicans. Additionally, comparative analysis helped us organize the arguments of speakers in various dimensions, and thus understand that the reasons for each country to the resistance have very different reasons.

The results of the Portuguese students’ performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have been the subject of numerous discussions in the blogosphere. Our interest in these discussions led to the development of this study, which aimed to know the factors influencing the results of Portugal in editions of PISA, from 2000 to 2012, according to posts and comments from blogs. The theoretical reference encompassed various aspects and evidence linked to PISA, as well as a brief contextualization of the curriculum in Portugal and the blogosphere. The study was carried out on the basis of the qualitative approach, the exploratory and descriptive type, having as data source ten blogs. The data consisted of thirty-five posts with their comments, for a total of one hundred and eighteen. They were analyzed through content analysis, with support from the qualitative analysis program WebQDA. The findings showed three factors influencing the performance of Portuguese students in the PISA: Education, Sampling and Retention/Repetition. Among the findings in the Education factor is noteworthy the discussions around the impact of public and private education and socio-economic conditions of the families/students on the results of PISA, and the ongoing political changes, with possible threats to the quality of teaching. The criteria of the definition of the student population and the consequent selection of the sample was considered ineffective, due to variations along the edits, which complicates the comparison of the results of the PISA. The Retention/Repetition was considered an inefficient pedagogical measure, with negative impact on the results of the PISA. The findings of this study were supported by the literature. With this study, we hope to contribute to extend the knowledge and create new spaces for future discussions and investigations in the area.

Once science education with STS orientation is currently recognized by the international community as a line of educational guidance to be followed because of all the potential it presents, it’s expected that the implementation of programs and / or projects of scientific aspect in school environment will follow this lead . From this perspective, for this study, we selected the project Eco-repórter da Energia (Energy eco-reporter)I from the Programa Eco-escolas (Eco-Schools program) and analyzed twenty videos of this project according to the STS features they present. Thus, we chose a qualitative methodology, where the selection and analysis of videos obeyed certain predefined criteria. As treatment of the data appealed to the content analysis we used the qualitative data analysis software WebQDA. The results indicate that the videos analyzed present some characteristics of STS, and most have only two or three STS indicators.

Along with the increasing growth of the elderly population, the establishment of Senior Citizens Universities (SCUs) came to provide the elderly new educational opportunities. In this article, considering, as methodological framework, a case study, of qualitative nature, we proceed to the analysis of three videos, inserted in blogs of SCUs, using WebQDA software. We tried to understand the relevance that pedagogical and cultural activities, provided by the SCUs, have in life quality improvement, according to their students’ opinion. From the results obtained, we highlight better quality of life, new technologies’ apprenticeship and the feeling of well-being. On what concerns to conviviality and interaction, both are connect with the elderly’s well-being. On what concerns to quality of life, it prevailed keeping active and leisure activities. Therefore, we concluded that, according to the results analyzed in this study, the activities developed in SCUs promote the improvement of quality of life for elders.

The resource teachers for the digital teaching environments, is a reflection of the progressive integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the educational context. It’s in this paradigm that the School Blogs arise as a mean of strengthening and promoting student learning. Therefore, this article, which is based on the methodological case study in relation to the analysis of 12 School Blogs from a private educational network in Brazil, seeks to ascertain whether these posts published on these Blogs School could provide and potentiate enabling environments for an active learning. The 12 blogs analyzed correspond to various disciplines of the 1st and 2nd level of education in Brazil. The analysis of the 221 posts and comments from these Blogs School allowed the assessment that they are not being used to promote active learning environments, revealing the vast majority a clear preference for passive learning.

A metodologia de ensino em metodologia da investigação necessita de inovação constante. Quando se observa, por exemplo, as ciências humanas e sociais, o ensino da metodologia científica é revestido de um caráter quase que exclusivamente teórico. É, contudo, na parte prática e técnica que outros grandes desafios de aprendizagem se apresentam. Mais ainda quando os contextos e ferramentas tecnológicas interferem na eficiência e eficácia da aprendizagem do trabalho científico. Reconhecemos, contudo, que os desafios da aprendizagem da investigação vão além da parte teórica, prática, técnica e tecnológica, mas passam também pelas condições humanas, instrucional e pedagógicas de quem ensina e de quem aprende. (...)

In a time when YouTube evolved from a simple video repository to a platform with interaction features similar to those of social networks, it is pertinent to ask how useful can this platform be for learning English as a foreign language. Starting from a qualitative content analysis of videos and comment sections of five YouTube channels, an attempt was made to understand in what way YouTube can be useful for the informal learning of English. To that end, data corpus available in the several channels of the platform dedicated to English teaching was used. After treating the data in WebQDA and analyzing the data, conclusions suggest that YouTube is, in fact, an English learning tool appreciated by people from initial levels of English proficiency. Some items that need improvement were also identified, as suggestions to the producers/creators of the channels, in order to make them more useful tools to learn English.