Scientix 2 – Publishable Summary

July – December 2014

The work presented in this document / workshop is supported by the European Commission’s FP7 programme – project Scientix 2 (Grant agreement N. 337250), coordinated by European Schoolnet (EUN). The content of the document/workshop is the sole responsibility of the organizer and it does not represent the opinion of the European Commission, and the Commission is not responsible for any use that might be made of information contained

Scientix 2 Publishable Summary

July – December 2014

Project name: Scientix 2

Project number: 337250

Coordinated by: European Schoolnet

Scientix 2 Publishable Summary, July – December 2014

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Introduction

During the second semester of 2014, the main milestone achieved was the organization of the 2nd Scientix conference. Additionally, the Scientix Awards were launched, the first communities of practice organized, the Scientix video and publication made available and 2 social media campaigns were organized. Tasks which had already been started continued (like the Teachers Panel, NCP events, etc.) and Scientix managed to catch up with the submission of all deliverables.

Work carried out between July and December 2014.

Scientix online services

New features were implemented on the Scientix website including an improved news detailed page, clearer translation on demand service, redesigned project library, expanded public profile and redesign of the resources repository. In terms of content: 22 new projects were uploaded and a total of 60 new resources. 44 teaching materials were sent to translate following the requests from users via the Translation on demand service. The Scientix Facebook group reached 2000 members by December, in the Scientix blog 18 posts were published and 536 messages were sent through the Scientix twitter, which generated 760 mentions, ~10,300 clicks and 1,600 retweets. Finally, in this period, the Scientix Online Meeting Room was used 30. Additionally, Scientix teachers can now look for projects looking for teachers and projects can filter and contact teachers to invite them to join their projects, directly.

Scientix dissemination

Two newsletter were published (on Responsible Research and Innovation and on National Initiatives in STEM policy and practice) and two media campaign were carried out. .

The theme and slogan of the first campaign was “Did you know?” The campaign presented different Scientix assets in a series of 21 messages disseminated twice weekly via Facebook

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and Twitter. The first campaign was also complemented by a series posters turned some of the messages into a visual form. The second social media campaign had as a slogan "Keep sharing". Over the seven weeks of the duration of the second campaign, nine original messages on the topic of sharing were posted. To further develop the themes introduced by the messages, a specific content on the Scientix website was developed and linked to the posts.

Scientix was presented at 8 different events by EUN (making it a total of 25 Scientix presentations by EUN during the first two years of the project). Additionally, the contribution of Scientix to specific campaigns/events/fairs continued during the second semester of 2014 with the participation of Scientix in 3 events (SiS- RRI, F2KS and an industry organized event).

The 2nd Scientix conference

The 2nd Scientix Conference took place on 24-26 October 2014 in Brussels. With 596 teachers, project managers, policy-makers and science education researchers attending from 41 countries, it was one of the major networking events in STEM education in Europe. The programme featured 70 talks, 14 workshops, 7 round-tables, 25 exhibition stands.

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The highlights were the three keynotes: Prof. José Mariano Gago, former Minister of Science, Technology, Information Society and Higher Education in Portugal, Ewald Breunesse, Manager Energy Transitions at Shell Netherlands, and Amber Gell, rocket scientist and spacecraft system engineer at Lockheed Martin and NASA.

The presentations and discussions at the conference were summarised by Marc Durando, Executive Director of European Schoolnet, who stressed the role of teachers in bringing about change in STEM education.

The conference also saw the launch of the Scientix publication, the Scientix video, and the Scientix Resource awards.

The Scientix videos

Two videos related to Scientix were published in October and December 2014: 1) the Scientix project video where we explain what is Scientix and its main aims; 2) the Scientix conference video, which gives an idea of what happened during the conference. These videos alongside the video by Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn, can be fund here.

The Scientix publication

The Scientix project public report was launched at the Scientix conference, and all the conference participants received a copy of it.

The publication aims at presenting specific activities of Scientix and their impact through the voices of people involved in the project. After a general introduction to Scientix, five people (science teacher, project manager of European science education projects, Scientix Ambassador, representative of Scientix National Contact Point, the Scientix Project Manager) present how concretely they benefit from Scientix and what they expect from it.

The publication is also available in the pdf format on the Scientix website at www.scientix.eu/web/guest/publication.

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The Scientix Teaching resources awards

The aim of the Scientix Awards is to encourage public funded STEM projects connected to Scientix to actively upload their resources to the Scientix resource repository, and to support the dissemination and uptake of high-quality STEM resources among teachers.

The competition is organised in seven rounds in two-month intervals. All resources uploaded in the Resource repository during a period specified for each round of the competition, are automatically included in the given competition round.

Awarded resources (up to four resources per competition) are promoted on the Scientix portal, highlighted in the newsletters, at Scientix events and during the media campaigns.

Additionally, if the resources have been published under a Creative Commons license allowing derivatives, Scientix will translate them into all 24 official EU languages. Representatives of the winning project will also be invited to a Scientix Science Projects Workshop in the Future Classroom Lab event to present their activities and resource.

The first two rounds of the competition were launched in September and October 2014 respectively.

The results of the first round was announced at the Scientix Conference in Brussels in October 2014; the results of the second round were announced on the 9th of January.

Round 1: http://www.scientix.eu/web/guest/scientixawards/resources-competition-1

Round 2: http://www.scientix.eu/web/guest/scientixawards/resources-competition-2

National Contact Points status update

In the second semester of 2014, four more NCPs were identified, reaching the total number of 30 NCPs. In the table below we show the updated final list of NCPs.

Country Organisation

1 Austria BMUKK

2 Belgium Technopolis

3 Bulgaria Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, BAS Education in Mathematics and

Informatics Department

4 Croatia CARNet

5 Cyprus Cyprus MoE

6 Czech Republic DUM ZAHRANICNICH SLUZEB

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Country Organisation

7 Denmark NTS-centeret

8 Estonia Estonian Research Council

9 Finland Finland’s Science Education Centre LUMA in the University of Helsinki

10 France La main a la pate

11 Greece Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus” (CTI)

12 Hungary Educatio Public Services Non-profit LLC

13 Ireland Professional Development Service for Teachers

14 Israel Makash

15 Italy INDIRE

16 Latvia Centre for Science and Mathematics - Univ of Latvia

17 Lithuania Ugdymo plėtotės centras (UPC)

18 Malta Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education within the Ministry of

Education and Employment in Malta

19 Netherlands Platform Beta Techniek

20 Norway The Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education

21 Poland Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences

22 Portugal Ministério da Educação e Ciência and Direção-Geral da Educação (DGE)

23 Romania University of Bucharest

24 Slovakia University of Zilina

25 Slovenia National Education Institute

26 Spain FECYT – Fundación Española para la Ciencia y Tecnología

27 Sweden Teknikforetagen

28 Switzerland Institut suisse des médias pour la formation et la culture/Centre suisse des

technologies de l’information dans l’enseignement (CTIE)

29 Turkey The Innovation and Educational Techonoligies - TK MoE

30 United Kingdom My science.co - National Science Learning Centre

One more NCP meetings took place (Zurich) and four Scientix national conferences were organized (Belgium, Italy, Ireland and Bulgaria), with around 100 participants each and were a success. It is important to note that in total therefore, 6 Scientix National conferences took place in 2014, which means between 22 and 26 are expected in 2015.

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3rd Scientix National conference: Belgium, 17-19 November 2014

The 3rd Scientix National Conference took place in Mechelen, Belgium on 17, 18 and 19 November 2014. With more than 500 participants engaged, including teachers, covering all educational levels, external speakers and exhibitors, the Scientix National Conference was definitely one of the biggest events on STEM education in Flanders of the year. Participants attended the Scientix National Conference in Technopolis as following: 97 participants from day one, 150 people joined on the 2nd day while 251 new attendees were welcomed on the 3rd day. Participants had the chance to join 46 different workshops and talks, where 16 workshops and talks were led by Technopolis staff members while the other 30 sessions were conducted by external speakers (representatives from other organisations within the field of STEM-education, universities and educational publishing companies, teachers etc.).

4th Scientix National conference: Italy, 21-22 November 2014.

The 4th Scientix National conference took place in Lucca, Italy, on 21–22 November 2014 in conjunction with the FuturText Event (http://www.futurtext.it/2014/). Over 200 participants, including school teachers, students, researchers, university professors, science communicators, science association, and policy makers attended the conference (speakers included). One of the objectives of the event was to cover all STEM subjects and offer participants different learning occasions (from more traditional frontal symposium, presentations to hands on activities).

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5th Scientix National conference: Ireland, 21-22 November 2014.

The 5th Scientix National conference took place on 21–22 November 2014 with 213 participants, including pre service and practicing teachers of all levels of experience. In order to reach a high number of teachers, the conference was held in four different venues over the two days: Athlone Education Centre, The University of Limerick, Blackrock Castle Observatory and The Eureka Labs in Cork. The venues were selected for the specialized facilities that they offered and/or their location: The two-day conference was designed to support teachers of all subjects of science. The emphasis was on hands-on workshops for teachers to share and learn new methods which are in accordance with Scientix aims of inquiry based learning.

6th Scientix National conference: Bulgaria, 7-8 December 2014.

The 6th Scientix National conference in Bulgaria was held at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, on 7-8 December 2014 in the frame of the National Seminar “The Inquiry Based Mathematics Education”. A total of 101 participants, covering STEM teachers and other professionals, representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, experts and policy makers took part in a number of plenary talks, workshops and posters sessions on science education. As mentioned by one science teacher from the Zaedno v chas program: “I got in touch with people and resources I have never suspected existing! Even more, I never expected that a single event could give you so much in terms of knowledge, resources and ideas that could be implement the very next day…”

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The Scientix Teachers panel: status update and workshops

By the end of November the Scientix teachers panel for Cycle 2 (September 2014 – March 2015) was considered complete with 84 teachers from 36 countries. In the following map we show where the different teachers come from.

For Cycle 2, two kick-offs were organized. One from the 5 – 7 of September and the second from the 12 – 14. Both events took place in Brussels.

The Scientix projects’ networking events

The 2nd Scientix Projects’ Networking Event took place on Friday 5th September 2014 in Brussels, in collaboration with the nanOpinion (http://bit.ly/1v76xGb) project and, in conjunction with the Cycle 2 Scientix teachers’ kick-off meeting which run from the 5th to the 7th of September with ~40 STEM teachers from across Europe.

With the theme “Teacher training in European projects and Policy recommendations”, the event brought together 32 project representatives from 22 European and national science education projects to disseminate their activities, discuss common issues and start new collaborations.

The one-day workshop included presentations in the morning from the projects present and workshops in the afternoon on: A: Teacher training in European projects (moderated by Scientix) and B: Policy recommendations from European projects (moderated by nanOpnion)

European Scientix hands-on training

Over six international Scientix workshops are planned in different locations in Europe within the context of events organized by other projects or organizations. The aim of these workshops is to either present Scientix services to teachers and project managers, or other relevant science education actors, or to serve as facilitators to the presentation of other science education projects. During the second half of 2014, two more workshops were organized: one specifically targeting policy makers (during Eminent 2014) and one for STEM teachers (during the 2014 eTwinning conference). By the end of 2014, 8 international workshops have therefore been organized.

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November 2014: workshop during Eminent 2014

EMINENT is the Experts Meeting in Education Networking annual event organised by European Schoolnet. It brings experts in education, Ministries representatives and other stakeholders to discuss the latest trends in education and technology. It took place in Zurich, 13-14 November 2014 and the topic was “Assessing key competences: shifting paradigms”.

During this conference, Scientix organized a workshop on “Policy recommendations in STEM projects - experiences and results”. The Scientix workshop focused on the results and lessons learnt from different European STEM projects. During the first part of the workshop, participants had the chance to get familiar with Scientix as well as other STEM, highlighting the results and best practices. The second part of the workshop concentrated on an open discussion, where participants were able to: 1. Share any experiences and good practices they had acquired by their involvement in STEM projects and the impact they had on themselves, school, etc.; 2. Think of how the results from the STEM projects presented during the workshop could help teachers and policy makers; 3. Reflect on a set of key recommendations for the presented projects and any other STEM projects.

26 participants (mostly policy makers, although some industry representatives and teachers were also present) learned about the final recommendations from projects like SAILS, nanOpinion, Engineer, Global excursion and Primas (the project coordinators were contacted before the workshop and they provided information and slides to the Scientix speakers to have their projects’ results presented on their behalf).

November 2014: workshop during the eTwinning 2014 annual conference

The eTwinning Annual Conference showed how the project can open up education to promote creativity and innovative practices in both teaching and learning, through different panel discussions, networking activities and workshops. It took place in Rome on the 28 / 29 November 2014 and a Scientix workshop was organized with 35 STEM teachers as participants.

The presentation/workshop was divided in two different sessions: One focusing on STEM projects and another one on teaching materials and resources, both shown as useful tools for teachers and available in the Scientix portal.

Coming next in Scientix 2 (January – June 2015)

Scientix teachers winter workshops (Glasgow and Malta)

Scientix Teachers Panel Cycle 3 (April 2015 – November 2015)

3 Scientix Projects Networking Events (Brussels, Barcelona and London)

3 NCPs meetings (Athens, Madrid, Amsterdam)

3 Science projects Workshops in the Future Classroom Lab (Feb, May, Jun)

Plus more than 10 Scientix national conferences!

www.scientix.eu

More information: Àgueda Gras-Velázquez <agueda.gras@eun.org>

Scientix 2 is supported by the European Commission’s FP7 programme (Grant agreement Nº 337250). The content of this document is the sole responsibility of the consortium members and it does not represent the opinion of the European Commission and the Commission is not responsible for any use that might be made of information contained herein.