Free teaching materials for Austrian educators

Cooperation deal concluded between Siemens Stiftung and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Women’s Affairs (BMBF)
The Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Women’s Affairs and Siemens Stiftung intend to work together in future to provide free teaching materials. More than 5,500 digital media from the media portal are now additionally available to teachers for science and technology teaching via the learning management systems used at schools.
The Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Women’s Affairs (BMBF) operates the two learning management systems www.edumoodle.at and www.lms.at for the country’s schools. These learning platforms, which are used throughout schools, are the basis for establishing and applying innovative scenarios based on e-learning.  Under a cooperation agreement, teachers throughout Austria will now also be provided with materials from the media portal of Siemens Stiftung. Apart from educators, students can also access and so work with the medium selected by their teacher.
Since this May, many teaching materials have been available to teachers and students in the media portal in the form of open educational resources (OER). The OER can be downloaded, modified, disseminated and published again by any Internet user without the need to register. This offering is being continuously expanded.
With its media portal, Siemens Stiftung has offered teachers a wide range of digital media for the past six years. “The types of media are just as diverse as their content and methods of use,” states Maria Schumm-Tschauder, the media portal Project Manager at Siemens Stiftung. “Pupils are accompanied in all stages of the learning process and acquire the necessary skills in the areas of know-how, methods and self-development.” Digital media open up diverse opportunities for students to discover sciences, understand interrelationships and draw links with their own everyday world. Diverse subjects and topical issues foster curiosity about scientific and technical interrelationships in a way that they stick in the memory.