Siemens Stiftung’s new open education portal for Latin America

Centro de Recursos Educativos Abiertos (CREA) is the new Spanish-language education portal for STEM lessons launched by the international foundation Siemens Stiftung. It provides teachers with more than 1,300 open teaching materials that are freely accessible and provided free of charge (OER). It also introduces modern teaching and learning methods and offers exciting advanced training for teachers. The teaching materials – such as worksheets, experiments, exciting interactive games, and much more – provide ideas and suggestions for varied and appealing lessons in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). They are available under an open license and are suitable for all types of schools and levels of education. How did CREA come about? Since founding the Siemens Stiftung, we have supported teachers and students in Germany and Europe, Africa, and Latin America through our educational projects. In recent years, our regional office in Santiago de Chile has built up a wide network of renowned education partners in Latin America and jointly initiated numerous projects to support qualitative STEM lessons. When nearly all schools in Latin America closed due to the coronavirus pandemic and teachers had to switch to distance teaching, our “Red STEM Latinoamérica” network had the idea of a common media platform where all partner organizations could make their high-quality STEM media available in one place. So in spring 2020, the new CREA portal was created, initially as a simple collection. It has meanwhile grown into an independent education portal with numerous functions for users. Our partners include universities, ministries, nongovernmental organizations, foundations, and other educational institutions in Latin America and Europe that continually develop new content and offerings for CREA.