Digital Libraries and Educational Resources: the AquaRing Semantic Approach

Large amounts of scientific digital contents are nowadays held by scientific institutions which collect, produce and store information valuable for dissemination, work, study and research. In this context, the development of the web and of learning technologies has brought new opportunities for teachers and learners to retrieve and share pedagogical objects. This paper introduces the use of a semantic approach developed within the EC funded AquaRing project with the aim of improving access to the vast amount of digital content concerning the aquatic environment and its resources, as well as supporting enhanced education and informal learning in this specific domain. In order to achieve these goals, a semantic framework and an educational ontology were developed and implemented. Both were used to support the indexing of learning resources and to provide several educational services to endusers (especially children, students, parents and teachers).