A new ecosystem of pedagogical solutions for teaching STEM & Engineering Design Process through MAKERSPACES, adapted to allow younger students of Primary and Secondary schools to effectively use technologies such as CAD, 3D printers and Laser cutters (MAKERSPACE)
The MAKERSPACE project aims to create a new ecosystem of pedagogical solutions for teaching STEM and Engineering Design Process through MAKERSPACES. Primary and secondary students will have the opportunity to effectively use technologies such as CAD (Computer- Aided Design), 3D printers and Laser cutters, through activities that will be developed based on the curriculum. The project is coordinated by ENGINO- NET LIMITED.
Funded by: Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF) – Restart 2016-202
Duration: 01/10/2022 – 30/09/2024
Creating School Seismology Labs for the Development of Students’ Competences (SEISMO-Lab)
The Erasmus+ project SEISMO-Lab is part of the action "Cooperation partnerships in school education". Five countries participate in the project (Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Romania and Turkey), with the aim of integrating STEAM practices in schools, through the implementation of activities related to educational seismology. SEISMO-Lab will establish Competence Development Labs in schools, based on the topic of seismology, in which students will be able to develop the needed skills and competences to be prepared for the 21st Century.
Throughout the project, a network of 100 schools will be created in the participating countries, which will develop collaborations with other schools and external organizations, authorities and institutions of their local community. The project is open to teachers of primary and secondary education teaching Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology), Mathematics, Technology and Geography and students aged 12-18. Some of the participating schools will be equipped with educational seismographs (e.g. TC1 seismometer, RaspberryShake) and the seismic data will be accessible to all in real time through the projects' online platform.
Website: https://seismolab.gein.noa.gr/
Duration: 01/03/2022 – 27/05/2024
Learning from the Extremes – A Rural Schools Innovation Roadmap (LfE)
The LfE project aims to address inequalities of access to digital education in schools communities from remote areas with low connectivity, limited or no access to devices and digital educational tools and content. The goal is to provide all the necessary information of what a school can achieve with adequate investment in ICT infrastructure, tools and content. The program will fund a specific number of schools located in rural areas to pilot the calls that they will submit themselves for the purpose of their digital development. The selection of schools will be done through the evaluation of the calls that they will submit.
Funding: European Commission PPPA Programme under Grant Agreement No.LC-01760255/10105266 LfE
Website: https://learningfromtheextremes.eu/
Duration: 01/02/2022 – 31/01/2024
MSc course in STEAM education (STEAMedu)
STEAMEdu aims to design of a master’s program for STEAM Education for training in-service and future educators to implement STEAM related courses in Wester Balkan Countries (higher education institutes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, and Kosovo). It involves transfer of know how, infrastructure development and capacity building for designing curricula and delivering STEAM education courses as well as establishing synergies between STEM and non-STEM higher education institutes.
Funded by: Erasmus +, KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices – Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education
Website: https://steamedu.sum.ba/
Duration: 01/01/2021 – 31/12/2023
Schools as Living Labs (SALL)
SALL is a European project gathering the expertise of 13 organisations from 12 different countries to propose a new approach to open schooling. By adapting the principles of the Living Lab methodology, SALL supports schools in the implementation of projects which link them with their local communities and address locally relevant issues related to the food system in all its dimensions (production, distribution, waste management, health, economy, etc.)
By participating in the SALL project, schools and teachers will experiment an open schooling approach based on the Living Lab methodology, aimed at making STEM teaching more relevant, systemic and inclusive. SALL will also help students develop new skills and positive attitudes, and conceive learning science as a way to actively contribute to the well-being of the world they live in.
Funded by: Ηorizon 2020, CSA
Website: https://www.schoolsaslivinglabs.eu/
Duration: 01/09/2020 – 31/08/2023
Developing innovative practices in a digital era for the teaching of Natural Sciences (Digi-Science)
The pandemic has caught the educational systems of countries off guard and many schools around the globe were forced to make a swift change from traditional school classes to online learning. In the countries represented by the current consortium, although there are significant efforts to increase digital preparedness and mainstream the use of ICT-tools in schools, many more steps are needed for their educational systems to respond vigorously to situations like the COVID-19 pandemic. Digi-Science aims to equip science teachers with the digital competences, tools and resources needed to confidently implement student-centred and collaborative learning experiences in new situations like online/distance and blended learning.
Funded by: Erasmus+, KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (KA226 – Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness).
Website: http://digi-science.ea.gr/
Duration: 01/06/2021 – 31/05/2023
An interdisciplinary STEM approach (STE(A)M IT)
STE(A)M IT project aims to produce the first European integrated STE(A)M framework. In order to really get students to see the interest of STEM degrees and careers, and even more importantly, show students, and society at large, the key role that STEM plays in improving our lives and their need for our future, we need STEM to be taught in an integrated way. We need all the components of S to work together. All the letters in STEM to work together. And even better, for all the subjects to work together STE(A)M.
In order to achieve this, the STE(A)M IT project aims to (1) create and test of a conceptual framework of reference for integrated STE(A)M education; (2) develop a capacity building programme for primary schools teachers and secondary STEM teachers, based on this framework, with a particular focus on the contextualization of STEM teaching, and (3) establish a network of guidance counsellors/career advisors in schools promoting the attractiveness of STEM jobs to their classes.
The project is coordinated by European Schoolnet (Belgium) in partnership with Istituto Nazionale di Documentazione, Innovazione e Ricerca (Italy), Italian University Line (Italy), Ministry Of Science And Education Of The Republic Of Croatia (Croatia), Ministério da Educação – Direção-Geral da Educação (DGE) (Portugal) and the University Of Cyprus.
Website: http://steamit.eun.org/
Duration: 01/12/2019 – 30/11/2022
Development of a new expandable robot along with an ecosystem of products that can support STEM education (GINOBOT)
The project is about the development of a new, expandable robotics vehicle that will enable students at Primary and Secondary school level to effectively learn Coding and STEM.
Funded by: Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF) – Restart 2016-2020
Website: https://www.engino.com/w/index.php/products/innolabs-robotics/ginobot
Duration: 01/06/2020 – 30/09/2022
Guiding the way towards STEAM through innovative learning approaches and contemporary science (Polar Star)
Polar Star aims to bring together state-of-the-art learning pedagogies and combine them with exciting activities that focus on contemporary science, thus helping teachers to introduce STEAM successfully in their class. At the same time the project focuses on the development of students’ key skills and competences as well as deepening their knowledge of fundamental science principles, increasing their appreciation of science and technology and their role in todays’ societies.
THE POLAR STAR APPROACH - 'Science as a whole' and Personalized, student-centred learning: The project team will combine innovative learning techniques like inquiry learning and the design thinking approach along with other cutting-edge educational tools into one seamless methodology, that will allow teachers to shift towards a student-centred type of teaching. In addition, teachers will be able to learn how to introduce interdisciplinary learning into their class using an advanced cross-disciplinary methodology that goes beyond the traditional organization of science curricula and allows teachers and students to make connections between science disciplines and discover underlying connections between phenomena.
THE POLAR STAR ACTIVITY KIT: To introduce contemporary science into the science classroom, POLAR STAR will focus on two main scientific areas, Arctic research and Astronomy. Although both fields of research have contributed greatly to the advancement of science and are directly linked to our everyday life and the development of societies, they are usually not seen as science disciplines with real impact on our lives and are largely left out of science curricula. However, both areas are enormously interdisciplinary and exciting for students (girls and boys alike) and thus make ideal vehicles to teach other sciences, very often considered less appealing, showcasing how such fields of research that might seem irrelevant to people’s needs have in fact a great impact on our lives.
Website: http://polar-star.ea.gr/
Duration: 01/09/2019 – 31/08/2022
Differentiation in Inquiry-based Learning (DifferentiatInq)
The DifferentiatInq project aims to the development of a differentiation tool for inquiry-based learning with a focus on experimentation. The main output of the project will be a manual on the differentiation concept for teachers and teachers students. The book will be available in both a digital form as well a print medium. In addition, based on the book, the consortium of the project will produce teacher training material and guidelines.
Funded by: Erasmus+, KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (KA201-Strategic Partnerships for school education)
Website: http://differentiatinq.eu/
Duration: 01/09/2019 – 31/08/2022
Broadening Recognition Initiatives Developing Gender Equity in Sciences (BRIDGES)
BRIDGES aims to design, evaluate and optimise an infrastructure based on recognition badges in order to stimulate an increased participation of women in STEM education and careers.
Funded by: Erasmus+, KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices; KA203 - Strategic Partnerships for higher education
Website: https://bridges.openrecognition.org/
Duration: 01/09/2019 – 31/08/2022
Inclusive environmental STEAM education with Online Labs (InSTEAM)
The InSTEAM project aims to create a series of learning resources that allow for more individualized, inclusive and personalized STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) learning. The goal is to establish pathways for inclusive, innovative and interdisciplinary environmental STEAM education that reduces disparities in access to and engagement with digital STEAM education.
The learning resources are organized into three environmental topics: Climate change, Water management and Renewable sources of energy.
Coordinator: University of Deusto (Ισπανία)
Participants: ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI SCHOLI PANAGEA SAVVA AE (Greece), University of Cyprus (Cyprus), NUCLIO NUCLEO INTERACTIVO DE ASTRONOMIA ASSOCIACAO (Portugal)
Reference no: 2019-1-ES01-KA201-064261
Funded by: Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership KA201
Website: http://insteam.deusto.es
Duration: 01/10/2019 – 30/09/2021
Modernization of Pedagogical Higher Education by Innovative Teaching Instruments (MoPED)
The MoPED project aims at inspiring Pedagogical Schools & Faculties of Ukrainian (UA) Universities personnel to develop innovative curricula, which include modern teaching tools and methodologies, in order to modernize the education that Ukrainian students receive. The idea is to make the Ukrainian education system competitive at a global level and set the basis for establishing education that promotes 21st century skills across all Ukrainian higher education institutions.
Website: http://mopedproject.eu/
Duration: 15/10/2017 – 14/10/2020
Teaching ICT with Inquiry (TIWI)
As it was clearly stated in the Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigiCompEdu) which was published by the European Commission in December 2017, the teaching professions face rapidly changing demands, which require a new, broader and more sophisticated set of competences than before. The ubiquity of digital devices and applications, in particular, requires educators to develop their digital competence. With this in mind and taking into account the main competences of the specific framework described by European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators, the TIWI project will help upper primary and secondary educators to: (a) Gain new skills and be in a position to teach coding efficiently to their students; (b) Become comfortable in using the inquiry based approach in their teaching and see its direct connection to the coding logic; (c) Provide them and their students with self-assessment instruments that will allow them to take control of their personal development and their students’ further learning.
There are a growing number of countries in Europe and internationally which are refocusing their ICT curricula on developing students’ computer programming and coding skills and introducing this topic in national, regional or school curricula. And this is of course a top priority for the education system. TIWI introduces the use of coding to upper primary and secondary teachers and to their students. The project focuses on the use of two main languages, Scratch and Python. Both programming languages are open and free to use while their combination with the inquiry based approach that TIWI proposes provides an innovative solution that can help both teachers and their students to build their digital skills and move to the ahead to the digital era. In addition, the project will address national operational objective for SCHOOL EDUCATION: Enhancement of attractiveness and quality of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) through project activities aimed at teacher competence development and STEAM careers promotion.
Website: http://tiwi.eun.org/
Duration: 10/09/2018 – 09/09/2020
School Networks Alert Citizens (SNAC)
SNAC project, building on the concept of Open Schooling, aims to perform an extended proof of concept experiment to a) transform schools in South Eastern Mediterranean basin countries to local hubs of education, innovation and information about earthquakes and disaster prevention, connecting them with local authorities, local civilian protection agencies, local business, research and science centres and other local stakeholders in the process and b) engage students in real-life projects that are proposing innovative solutions adopted to the local conditions by employing real‐problem solving skills, handling and studying situations, and participating in meaningful and motivating science inquiry activities on earthquake disaster prevention and mitigation. The objective of this combination is on one hand to increase children’s and students’ interest in science and how it affects every-day life and on the other to stimulate teacher motivation on up-taking innovative teaching methods, subjects and practices to enrich and renew the science curriculum. The SNAC project also provides increased opportunities for cooperation and collaboration between schools across different areas and countries and encourage relationships between stakeholders of both formal and informal education. Teachers are key players in the renewal of science education and being part of a network allows them to improve the quality of their teaching and supports their motivation. Networks can be used as an effective component of teachers’ professional development, are complementary to more traditional forms of in-service teacher training and stimulate morale and motivation which then is passed to learners and have long-term implications for the individuals and for the society. In this framework, SNAC promotes open education and innovation in schools and their communities, promotes the development of key competences for students who are developing projects and activities serving their communities and presents innovative whole-school approaches which are supporting teachers’ professional development through collaboration, networking and good practice exchanges.
Website: https://snac-project.ea.gr/
Duration: 01/09/2018 – 31/08/2020
Next Generation Stakeholders and Next Level Ecosystem for Collaborative Science Education with Online Labs (Next-Lab)
The Next-Lab project is the continuation of the successful Go-Lab project and aims to bring about large-scale changes in the way that science, engineering and technology are taught throughout Europe. The modules project centres around a huge collection of interactive online laboratories and teaching modules. Students can use these resources to carry out scientific experiments, while teachers can use them to enrich their classes.
Next-Lab follows on from the successful Go-Lab project. In the context of this new project, a broad international consortium intends to expand the scope and impact of the teaching modules. For instance, the target group will be expanded to include younger students in primary education, and efforts will be made to align the project with teacher training programmes. In this way – via the teachers of the future – the consortium will be able to get even more young people inspired about science and technology. The open authoring and sharing platforms will also be enhanced by the addition of extra tools enabling students to cooperate with one another remotely and to measure their progress. In addition, the project includes research into inquiry-based learning processes and into the effectiveness of the available resources.
The project is being coordinated by the University of Twente in the Netherlands and includes the following other partners: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Information Multimedia Communication AG (Germany), EUN Partnership AISBL (Belgium), Ellinogermaniki Agogi Scholi Panagea Savva (Greece), University of Cyprus (Cyprus), Universidad de la Iglesia de Deusto (Spain), Tartu Ülikool (Estonia), Núcleo Interactivo de Astronomia (Portugal), École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France), Turun Yliopisto (Finland) and the University of Leicester (UK).
The Go-Lab Sharing and Authoring platform
The members of the ReSciTEG group have created several learning environments, in greek and in english, using the Go-Lab authoring platform (Graasp), which are pubished on the Go-Lab portal.
Website: https://nextlab.golabz.eu/
Duration: 01/01/2017 – 31/12/2019
Promoting innovative Learning Approaches for the Teaching Of Natural sciences (PLATON)
The PLATON project includes partners from six countries (Portuguese, Greece, Cyprus, Finland, Spain and United Kingdom), it is funded by the Erasmus+ Program and consists part of the "Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices" action.
PLATON aims to provide teachers communities with a coherent teachers' training framework which will focus on the promotion of student-centered teaching approaches, such as inquiry-based learning and a holistic interdisciplinary approach for teaching science in schools, based on innovative teaching methods, like the "Big Ideas of Science", also fostering collaboration between teachers of different science disciplines. In addition, the framework will provide support for the use of online educational tools, so that to enrich teachers' teaching skills and bringing them up to the speed with student's needs and interests. After the training, teacher will be able to include effective student-centered teaching approaches in their daily practice, like inquiry-based learning, and make use of appropriate educational tools to enhance students' engagement in scientific practices. In addition, students will have the opportunity to study, in depth, many subject domains and create links between ideas and phenomena from different disciplines.
Website: http://platon-project.eu/
Duration: 01/10/2016 – 31/09/2018
Inquiry Awards for Youth over Europe (Ark of Inquiry)
Ark of Inquiry is a research and development project funded by the European Commission, involving 13 project partners from 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey. The overall aim of the Ark of Inquiry project is to create a "new science classroom", one which would provide more challenging, authentic and higher-order learning experiences and more opportunities for pupils to participate in scientific practices and tasks, using the discourse of science and working with scientific representations and tools.
The Ark of Inquiry project centres around two closely related concepts: Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE). Ark of Inquiry aims at raising youth awareness to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), as well as building a scientifically literate and responsible society through Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE).
To this aim, the objectives of the Ark of Inquiry project are as follow:
- Developing a pedagogical framework for identifying inquiry-based activities that promote pupils' awareness of RRI
- Collecting RRI-related inquiry-based activities and environments
- Building a large supportive community
- Training teachers
- Developing Ark of Inquiry based on evaluation results
- Making the inquiry-based activities available across Europe through the Ark of Inquiry platform
- Disseminating the approach in schools, universities, science centres, and in society.
Teachers, pupils, scientists, university students and science centres are taking part in the project. Teachers play a crucial part, guiding pupils in their inquiry-based activities. Teachers are the main stakeholders of the project. They will receive specific face-to-face training for initiating inquiry-based activities and ensuring their successful continuity for years to come. Scientists, university students and science centres carry the important role of providing a support network to the teachers and pupils.
In the context of Ark of Inquiry project, ReSciTEG developed several web-based supportive materials for our main stakeholders – teachers, teacher educators, scientists and parents. These materials are expected to be used as a point of reference for all stakeholders in the following ways. First, teachers can use them for gaining insight into or refresh their understanding of inquiry learning and teaching. Second, teacher educators can integrate the web-based materials in the design and implementation of professional development courses for teachers. Third, scientists can use the web-based materials to expand their understanding of how their everyday inquiry activities can be transferred for learning purposes during designing and implementing instructional settings. Finally, the web-based materials for parents, written in a language that is easy to comprehend, are expected to serve as supportive materials in helping parents monitor and scaffold their children's inquiry activities at home.
Additionally, ReSciTEG developed teacher training materials to train teachers so that they will be able to support and motivate the pupils in their inquiry-based activities. The purpose of the teacher training materials concerns the development of teacher training materials that will be used by all partners of the Ark of Inquiry project during the design, implementation, and coordination of teacher training courses at their countries.
Website: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/612252
Duration: 01/03/2014 – 28/02/2018
Schools Study Earthquakes (SSE)
The SSE project is an Erasmus + project involving 6 partners from 5 countries: Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and Italy. The main aim of the project is to promote scientific literacy and cooperation between schools and countries, through the concept of earthquakes. More specifically, students will learn in depth special topics of physics and geology, participate and perform investigations and work with instruments used in seismology, all in a cooperative manner. Issues associated with the societal impact of this natural phenomenon will be also addressed. In order to achieve the project's objectives, inquiry was chosen as the main instructional approach.
In general, 50 schools of secondary education will be involved in the educational activities of the project and a total minimum of 250 science teachers will be trained prior and during the phase of the implementation at schools. A South Eastern European / Mediterranean School Network of digital seismographs will be created and therefore, students will work with real seismic data in real time. Also, in order to facilitate the use of the Network, as well as the results of the project from participating and non-participating schools, a website and guide manuals will be developed. The ReSciTEG team is actively involved in the project, especially in the development of the Intellectual Outputs concerning the pedagogical methodologies and the implementation plan that will be followed during the project.
Website: http://sse-project.eu/
Duration: 01/09/2015 – 31/08/2017
Global Online Science Labs for Inquiry Learning in Schools (Go-Lab)
The overall aim of the project is to engage young people in science topics in way that they will acquire scientific inquiry skills, and experience the culture of doing science by undertaking active scientific experimentation. More specifically, Go-Lab aims at:
- Creating a pedagogical framework for inquiry learning with online labs
- Building the Go-Lab federation of online labs
- Providing one-click access to online labs and personalization facilities
- Building a Community of teachers, students and researchers
In order to achieve the above goals, the Go-Lab Portal creates a federation of online labs that can be used by the teachers, in combination with inquiry learning applications that offer support for the students during their inquiry activity. The online labs and the applications can be organized, then, in an Inquiry Learning Space (ILS), that can be used by the students, giving them the opportunity to perform personalized scientific experiments in a structured learning environment. By doing so, the students conduct experiments using modern laboratory equipment, deepen their knowledge in fundamental sciences and being motivated to follow scientific carrier in the future.
In the Go-Lab Portal, there is an extensive repository of online labs from worldwide renowned research organizations, such as European Space Agency (ESA, The Netherlands), European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN, Switzerland), Núcleo Interactivo de Astronomia (NUCLIO, Portugal), as well as multiple universities and institutions. In addition to the online labs repository, in the Go-Lab Portal there is a repository of applications that can be included in an ILS, such as the Hypothesis Scratchpad tool for supporting students when formulating scientific hypotheses, the Experiment Design Tool to guide students in designing and executing fair scientific experiments, the Data Viewer tool for supporting students in graphing and interpreting their collected data, etc. Finally, the third repository in the portal comprise of ILSs that have been created by teachers and Go-Lab partners. The Go-Lab Portal offers teachers the possibility to create their own ILSs customized for their students and share it with other teachers. The benefit from sharing is the exchange of ideas and experiences that can improve the effort of teachers when using the Go-Lab with their class. The authoring platform for the creation of an ILS is Graasp. If teachers wish to use the Go-Lab to create such learning activities, they can find any support needed in the Support page of the Go-Lab portal, where there are many videos, tutorials, forum and other supporting services.
The ReSciTEG is the National Coordinator of the Go-Lab Project in Cyprus, responsible for the completion of the pilot activities and the incorporation of the Cypriot teachers to the broader Go-Lab teacher community. For doing so, many teacher trainings and pilot activities were done so far. In general, more than the 400 students participated in Go-Lab activities in Cyprus and this number is about to extended. In addition to that task, the members of the ReSciTEG have been involved in the creation of the pedagogical framework of the Go-Lab project. Finally, as pedagogical experts, our members have created several ILSs in Greek and English language that were used in pilot activities.
Website: https://www.golabz.eu/
Duration: 01/11/2012 - 31/10/2016
