Science Education

Europe has made great strides towards agreeing on a genuine new mechanism to fund frontier research – the European Research Council (ERC). This is a cornerstone for achieving the ambitions of the European Council (Lisbon agenda) to increase substantially Europe’s innovativeness and competitiveness. The aim is to boost fundamental research as a means to be a winner in a world wide knowledge-based economy.

What has been collectively achieved over the past three years by a coalitio

A novel learning platform that uses a variety of mature technologies to support and expand teaching practices has recently completed testing, proving popular among high school students and teachers.

“The main part of the project used established pedagogical theories, such as the activity theory and the theory of expansive learning in a normal school environment. Of course we used technology to support this,” says Dr Costas Davarakis, project manager at Systema Technologies, the coord

The Swiss economy is undergoing a change from a production economy to an economy of knowledge. In the future, Switzerland’s added value will be acquired primarily through the formulation and exploitation of product knowledge, and its wealth will be sustained mostly through the realization of these knowledge-based products. Further development of innovation in Switzerland is having a correspondingly significant role. It was for this reason that ETH Zurich set up the International Competence Cent

Imagine entering a museum and having information about the artwork at your fingertips or being able to collaborate remotely with fellow students in a university. Those services, and others, are being provided by a new mobile learning environment.

Created by MOBIlearn under the European Commission’s IST programme by 24 partners from Europe, Israel, the United States and Australia, the system breaks new ground in the development of mobile learning, or m-learning, applications that

Establishing live, interactive links between pupils on field trips and those in the classroom is a set of tools that frees teachers from the challenge of engaging all pupils on external field trips.

Organising field trips may sometimes be difficult because the venue limits the total number of visitors or parents may simply be unable to afford the additional costs involved. Therefore the IST programme-funded RAFT project set out to demonstrate the educational benefits of externa

What is the universe made of? What is the biological basis of consciousness? Can the world continue to sustain a growing population and growing consumption? In celebration of its 125th anniversary, Science has taken stock of some of the most important, yet-unanswered scientific questions and delved into 25 of them for a closer look at just what we do and don’t yet know about our universe.

Questions like these show us how far science has come in explaining the natural world, a