New Perspectives in Science Education
How the “ Go-Lab” Project Will Open Up Laboratories for Large Scale Use in Science Education
Christine Kourkoumelis, Physics Professor,University of Athens (Greece)
Stylianos Vourakis, Researcher, IASA (Institute of Acceleraing Systems and Applications),Athens (Greece)
Sofoklis Sotiriou, Head of R and D department, Ellinogermaniki Agogi,Athens (Greece)
Abstract
It has been noted by various reports that during recent years, there has been an alarming decline in young people’s interest for science studies and mathematics. Since it is believed that the traditional teaching methods often fail to foster positive attitudes towards learning science, the European Commission has made intensive efforts to promote science education in schools though new methods based on the inquiry based techniques: questions, search and answers. This should be coupled to laboratories which are very important elements in learning and practicing science.
The “Go-lab- Global Online Science Enquiry Learning at School” an FP7 EC project which
started more than a year ago- for a four year duration- aims to put together remote labs, virtual labs and datasets/analysis tools, in order to enhance the resources available to teachers for large scale use in education. The project has started with a series of labs from large research organizations (CERN, ESA) and universities and will gradually enrich its repository through large scale pilots with contributions from its users as well.
An example of the partner developed data set/analysis tool “ HYPATIA” which can be analyze interactively data from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN and be used for the recent Nobel prize winning Higgs boson “hunt” will be presented as an example of best practice.
