Introducing Learning Objects in teacher preparation

A key issue for the diffusion of LOs is preparing teachers to integrate them into lesson planning and teaching practice. This issue is often neglected and this is why many teachers still feel more puzzled than attracted by repositories of LOs. In our opinion, it is necessary to explicitly prepare teachers on this activity, starting from pre-service teacher training, so as to form a positive attitude and start a constructive tradition as concerns the sharing of educational material. In this paper we suggest an approach to teacher preparation on LOs, that we have been experimenting over the past three years. Critical reflection has a central role in it, as a way of understanding the potential of peers' educational material and producing more effective and more easily re-usable ones. In this paper we describe the characteristics of our preparation program and the conceptual framework that inspired it.