Who are we? What do we do now?
What do we plan in the future?

A brief overview of science driven educational projects

ACCENT

a) Who are we?
ACCENT is a European research cluster on atmospheric composition change, funded as network of excellence by the European Union, and involving more than 30 research institutes in Europe. ACCENTs main focus is research but the ACCENT branch Training & Education shall also explain the knowledge we have on atmospheric and environmental processes for the schools.

b) What do we do now?
ACCENT has a school portal www.accent-network.ch/schools which offers basically two tools: a) A monthly Internet based school magazine in English, French, German and Italian relating scientific topics to the curricular context and explaining in special editions also hot topics in the news (for example hurricanes). b) A report tool (RAPTOR), through which pupils can upload their own environmental investigations in schools to the Internet.

c) What will we do in the future?
ACCENT is funded until 2008. The monthly school magazine shall regularly appear at least during the year 2006.

CarboEurope / CarboOcean

a) Who are we?
CarboSchools is promoting partnership projects between secondary school teachers and global change scientists in the frame of two large EU research projects on the topic, CarboEurope and CarboOcean. The goal is to raise young people's awareness of the local and global consequences of climate change, discover scientific research and act locally to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

b) What do we do now
The www.carboschools.org site, progressively in various EU langages, offers access to:
- a 40-page educational booklet introducing research challenges, questions & methods
- a "teacher-scientist partnership guide" with practical advice based on past experience in various European countries
- a publication space to share resources and results with other carboschools participants all over Europe
contact: Philippe Saugier, saugier @ netcourrier.com

ESPERE

a) Who are we?
The ESPERE Association's mission is to inform the public about processes in the climate system and human-induced climat change with a particular focus on school education. The preferred medium is the Internet. Due to the EU funded project ESPERE-ENC, ESPERE offers now access to a multilingual Climate Encyclopaedia ( www.espere.net ). The mission of the Association is to involve scientists and teachers in promoting the dissemination in schools and the public, as members, supporters, advisors or godparents or our publications.

b) What do we do now?
ESPERE is still improving and in some parts slowly extending the 'Climate Encyclopaedia'.  The Steering Committee works on the organisation of a community of godparents who shall help with a regular update of the platform in many languages and scientific fields. ESPERE supports translation to further languages.  ESPERE promotes in particular the cooperation and interlinks with comparable efforts in order to guide the user through a learning area of reliable resources and allow higher efficiency in using available resouces.

c) What do we plan for the next years?
ESPERE applies for funding in order to carry out further projects under the umbrella of the platform: educational resources, public outreach, teacher training. Projects can be national or international, important is the communication among the consortia. The ESPERE Association is a regular and international non-profit society open for (present or former) Earth scientists and pedagogues/teachers as members. The community should grow. ESPERE will administer the Climate Encyclopaedia together with other partners also in the future and systematically interlink it with the publications of other projects.

GIFT - Geophysical Information for Teachers

a) Who are we?
GIFT is an international further education workshop for teachers organised by the educational committee of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
Website of the educational committee:
http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/info/committee_on_education.html

b) What do we do now?
The educational committee organises a 2-3 days workshop for a about 60-70 teachers from European countries, which is in major parts granted by the EGU. Outstanding scientists are invited to give lectures, hands-on applications for the classroom are demonstrated. The workshop is carried out during the EGU general assembly in Vienna (April, 2-7 2006), giving teachers also the chance to get an idea of the other conference contributions.

c) What do we plan for the next years?
GIFT will also take place in the same way in the next years, but with changing topics. Once a year the eduational committee meets in order to prepare the next workshop. For 2007 the topic "Urban environments" is suggested, another topic for the years to come may be "Energy and the carbon cycle".

GLOBE

a) Who are we?
GLOBE is since 10 years established as scientific hands-on education program for schools focussing on environmental measurements. Initially founded by the US vice-president Al Gore and with headquarter in Boulder / Colorado GLOBE developed a world-wide network, with GLOBE schools active in more than 100 countries.
See also: What is The GLOBE Program?

b) What do we do now?
GLOBE schools carry out observational measurements (cloudiness, ozone, precipitation, biological indicators ...) following tested and approved measurement protocols (so called GLOBE protocols) and add the information to world-wide databases on the GLOBE server. GLOBE teachers are trained by certified GLOBE teacher trainers.

c) What do we plan for the next years?
GLOBE protocols are adopted to new topics of interest. The country coordinators continue their work and develop the network in the respective countries. GLOBE Europe is just establishing as a more independent branch with an annual European GLOBE meeting and a separate Steering Committee and may participate in additional projects based on local funding as for example the e-Learning platform eLSEE.

International Polar Foundation

a) Who are we?
The International Polar Foundation's mission is to communicate and educate on the reality of human-induced climate change through the findings of Polar sciences and thereby convince sociaety to act responsibly now to ensure a sustainable world for future generations.
It was created in 2002, is based in Bruxelles, and has local antennas in Paris, Geneva and London.
The educational department of the IPF is located in Geneva and managed by Laurent Dubois and Agathe Weber.

b) What do we do now?
The Educational Department is actually developping educational tools such as a comic book about climate change and 26 short animations explaining "what is energy?".

c) What do we plan for the next years?
We are setting up a big project called "Clim@tic" which will last 3 years, centered on the IPY. 11 schools or institutes of 8 different countries are already participating. Among other things, the project will include teacher formations, educational tools specially concieved for this project, and a dedicated website allowing exchanges between teachers and their classes, scientists, and expedition teams in the polar and equatorial regions, as well as the creation of an interactive virtual laboratory on the website. This project aims to raise the children's awareness of climate change and polar region's fragility, and raise their interest for science through interactive contacts with specialists and expeditions on the field.