9th International Conference on Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST), Seoul, South Korea, 17-19 May 2006 COMMUNICATING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN ROMANIAN SCHOOLS – THE “HANDS-ON SCIENCE” PROJECT Dan Sporea, Radu Sporea National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Romania Abstract We are coordinating at national level the European Union funded Comenius project “Hands-on Science”, a project aiming both to improve science teaching in schools, and to rise young people’s interest in science and technology subjects. The paper reveals the various methods we have used to achieve these targets, both from the organizational point of view and means of expression. In several cities of Romania science clubs were organized in schools, where teachers and students from neighborhood schools present every two months reports on various scientific subjects, new set-ups and virtual experiments they developed. Every six months the “Hands-on Science” network is coordinating a science fair at national level, where small research projects run by students are presented as an exhibition like contest. Apart from the classical educational practice (real and virtual experiments, scientific presentation, etc.) we used more unconventional means to introduce science and technology to schools students such as: theater, poetry, live music, visual arts, all on science related subjects. Keywords: Comenius project, hands-on science, high school, science communication 1. Introduction One of the many challenges our society is facing in the modern world is the growing discrepancy existing between the rising demand of highly qualified manpower (in the field of science and technology development) and the low number of young, talented people graduating technical schools. This is a concern on both sides of the Atlantic, and governments, companies and professional societies make efforts to overcome this situation. Almost everyone realized now that, in order to have students interested to study science, we have to consider more carefully the problem at all levels of the education pyramid: primary, secondary, college [1]. The way children are trained to approach science understanding as they grow-up has a major impact on their future options and affinities. In the North America, a consortium built around SPIE, OSA, MESA and NOAO obtained just two years ago an important financial support ($1.7 million grant) from the National Science Foundation in order "to design and implement an optics-based educational enrichment program for middle school students in the United States" [2]. Major professional bodies have societies dedicated to teaching activities, and in some cases they have a special focus on the improvement of technology teaching in high schools [3]. The European Union recognized the importance of science literacy by supporting various projects in the frame of Socrates Programme (Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, Comenius [4]), an annual contest for young scientists [5], a major conference [6] and a forum for the dissemination of science results among teachers in Europe [7]. In the frame of the European Union’s funded Comenius project “Hands-on Science” [8], our Institute is managing in Romania, at the national level, a network of very active high schools aiming to attract students towards science and technology study by offering them the possibility to learn and to express themselves through experiments. The main goals of our team, as part of the “Hands-on Science” European network are: 1. to transform the school (teachers and students) from classical end-users for teaching and training aids into active designers and developers of such materials; 2. to use IT & C technologies as efficient tools for the democratization of science teaching, by open the door to the ‘knowledge treasure” to less favoured players and by assisting with funds/ consultancy/ advertising those able to craft an other face to the traditional teaching schemes and to create new, unexpected teaching aids; 3. to promote as much as possible the generous ideas of the project into a large pool of recipients and beneficiaries (students, parents, teachers, central and local authorities, NGOs, companies involved in the teaching process). In designing the working plan for the Romanian participation to the project we focused on several directions which can bring the maximum benefit both for the project and for the country, on its way to EU integration: a. to build strategic partnerships with organizations and companies which can assist us to run the project, either through direct financial support or by associating the project name with their image; b. to support the inclusion of virtual instrumentation programming teaching in high schools; c. to assist high schools teachers in developing real/ virtual experiments; d. to encourage high school teachers to train students in developing their own experimental set-ups and training aids; The 9th International Conference on Public Communication of Science and Technology e. to prepare teaching materials in electronic and multimedia format; f. to facilitate the access to experiment-based teaching to less favoured groups (minorities, orphan children, students form rural areas); g. to disseminate the project results though lectures, conferences, communication sessions. The paper will refer further to the major results we have according to the above mentioned strategy. 2. Project description The coordinator of the Romanian team is the Laboratory for Lasers Metrology and Standardization, part of the National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, located at Magurele, near by Bucharest. Previously, the Laboratory also managed several projects dedicated to vocational training (Leonardo da Vinci and PHARE). Our research background helped us a lot during this Comenius project, both through our access to up-to-date scientific instruments and investigation methods, and by our contact with companies and professional societies, acting as would-be project supporters. According to the project rules, we assembled a national network formed by various high schools and vocational schools across the country, entities which participate to the project as associate members. We want to mention just few of the more active ones: • “Grigore Moisil” Theoretical High School, Bucharest; • “Tudor Vladimirescu” Theoretical High School, Bucharest; • “Decebal” Bilingual High School, Bucharest; • “I.L. Caragiale” National College, Bucharest; • “Nicolae Titulescu” National Vocational College, Slatina; • “C. Kiritescu” High School of Economics, Bucharest; • “Vasile Alecsandri” National College, Galati; • “Teacher Training Center”- Bucharest- Romania; • “Elena Cuza” National College, Bucharest; • “Edmond Nicolau” Technical College, Bucharest; • High School of Art, Ramnicu Valcea; • “Bethlen Gábor” College, Aiud; • Elementary School in Mierlesti de Sus, Perieti; • Elementary School 45 “Titu Maiorescu”, Bucharest; • Elementary School No. 156, Bucharest. The major direction we focused our efforts in the last two years were: the diversity of activities in the project frame, a wider impact at the country level, and the accent on results dissemination. As it concerns the diversity we have to refer to: the multitude of themes covered by the network activities (Physics, Chemistry, Natural sciences, Ecology & tourism, Consumer protection, Applied science, Science history, and subjects of more general interest such as Scientific literacy); the multidisciplinary approach; the great variety of means used to teach science; the intercultural method by involving minorities; the wide span of participating children age (from primary school to high school); the use of various financial support in addition to that provided by the European Union’s grant. Considering our past experience with graphical programming and the use of virtual instrumentation (LabVIEW and Measure Foundry) for data acquisition and instrumentation control, our Laboratory decided to support, in the frame of the "Hands-on Science" project a programme for high schools teachers training on the use of National Instruments software tools. As the situation differs from high school to high school, our common support concentrated on several different directions [9]: • For high schools already having a PC data acquisition board (there are for the moment very few) dedicated sensors (i.e. force sensor, electro-magnetic field sensors) were bought, which made possible for the teachers to develop some original experimental set-ups, running under computer control. Such an approach is an innovative one for Europe, as far as high school experiments can now become quite complex and very flexible. • High schools possessing such an interface were also encouraged to use more trivial sensors/ signal sources (photodiodes, light emitting diodes, etc.) and to prepare some less complicated experiments. • In the case of another high school, a simple PC interface developed in Romania was used in connection with LabVIEW programming to collect biological data for human heart activity analysis. • The vast majority of high schools involved into this programme and which do not have a PC interface, worked on the development of LabVIEW-based simulation programmes to teach physics through virtual experiments. Among the most notable results in the above mentioned activities are the experiments prepared at “Grigore Moisil” High School through the efforts of Mrs. Mihaela Garabet and Mr. Ion Neacsu. Their approach was a two-fold one: real The