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learn more about the core team of PLATON
Address: Núcleo Interactivo de Astronomia, Largo dos Topazios, 48 – 3F, 2785 - 817 S. D. Rana, Portugal
Web: http://www.nuclio.pt
Contact Person: Rosa Doran, Joana Latas
E-Mail: rosa.doran@nuclio.pt, joana.latas@nuclio.pt
Partner Telephone: +351 214 537 440
NUCLIO - Núcleo Interactivo de Astronomia (NUCLIO) is a non-profit association of professional astrophysicists, geologists, scienceteachers and amateur astronomers devoted to public outreach and science education. NUCLIO is an official training centre recognized by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. NUCLIO’s activities include: training teachers in the use of new technologies, innovative methodologies, promotion of real research in classroom where students are introduced to the scientific methods using robotic telescopes , data mining, and other advanced tools for science learning. In the last years NUCLIO has gained expertise in the use of serious games for science education and the integration of real science experiences in classroom environment, for example, the search for asteroids, the use of robotic telescopes, etc. This experience was part of an important programme, Universe Quest, an NSF funded project, devoted to inspire girls to take science careers using the construction of serious games as a tool to debate science. NUCLIO has been involved in several EC projects as national coordinator for Portugal and more recently as coordinator of international community building efforts, with the mission to support teacher in the uptake of innovative approaches for science learning and the use of more student centered approach such as the use of inquiry based learning methodology. NUCLIO is the coordinator of one of the largest astronomy education efforts in the world, the Galileo Teacher Training Program, a legacy of International Year of Astronomy 2009 endorsed by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO and part of the Cosmic Light cornerstone of the UN endorsed International Year of Light 2015. The program reached since 2009 over 100 nations and 30 000 teachers. NUCLIO is the coordinator of the Portuguese Language Expertise Centre for the International Astronomical Union where, among other roles, has the responsibility of bringing innovation and capacity building to Portuguese speaking nations.
Address: Ellinogermaniki Agogi, Research and Development Department, Dimitriou Panagea St. 15351 Pallini Greece
Web: http://www.ea.gr
Contact Person: Eugenia Kypriotis
E-Mail: ekypriotis@ea.gr
Partner Telephone: +30 210 8176790
Ellinogermaniki Agogi (EA) is an educational organization of private law, officially recognized by the state. Established in 1995, the Research and Development Department of EA provides the test bed for research applications for the design, development and implementation of the research activities in education. The R&D Department acts therefore as an interface between the pedagogical research, the technological innovation and the school community. It focuses on the design, implementation and support of pedagogical and technological innovation in educational practice, both through internal research as well as through collaborations
with numerous educational, research and commercial institutions in Europe and the world. EA is an institutional member of EDEN (European Distance Education Network), of STEDE (Science Teacher Education Development in Europe), of ECSITE (European Network of Science Centres and Museums) network and a partner school of the German Excellence Network of STEM Schools “MINTEC”. The work of the R&D Department which currently employs 15 full time researchers (7 PhD level, 8 MSc) focuses also on the following areas:
a) Development of methodologies and empirical research to investigate processes of learning and knowledge acquisition in various subject matter areas (physics, mathematics, biology, history, etc.);
b) Design and development of educational learning scenarios based on the concept of inquiry learning, which has been developed and tested in various EU projects and applied within European educational communities;
c) Cooperation and collaboration with Universities, research centers, museums and private companies for the development and testing of educational material and software, using virtual and augmented reality;
d) Collaboration with computer science departments and artificial intelligence labs for the development of computational models and AI learning systems;
e) Design of technology-supported learning environments.
Address: University of Cyprus, Department of Educational Sciences, P. O. Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus
Web:http://www.ucy.ac.cy / http://www.ucy.ac.cy/resciteg/en/
Contact Person: Marios Papaevripidou
E-Mail: mpapa@ucy.ac.cy
Partner Telephone: +357 22 892957
The University of Cyprus is a public University with approximately 4,000 undergraduate and 1,000 Master’s and PhD students. There are approximately 350 members of the faculty. The Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Cyprus is a large department with 22 members of the faculty, and 35 associate or assistant personnel. There are two undergraduate (primary and pre-primary school education) programs, a pre-service postgraduate secondary education program (across all subject domains taught in secondary education) and seven postgraduate programs at the Masters and PhD level (including science, math and technology education). In science education it’s active in research into inquiry learning, computer supported collaborative learning, physical and virtual laboratory experimentation, modelling, science curriculum development and assessment, conceptual understanding and educational evaluation.
The Research in Science and Technology Education Group (ReSciTEG) at the University of Cyprus conducts a co-ordinated program of research, curriculum development and instruction. The group includes faculty, research associates, post-doctoral students and graduate students (both at the Master's and PhD level). The director of ReSciTEG is Dr. Zacharias C. Zacharia. The ReSciTEG members have a lot of experience with designing technology enhanced curriculum in the area of science education and with designing and implementing online inquiry oriented environments for science teaching and learning purposes. Additionally, the ReSciTEG members have a lot of experience with evaluating skills related to the cognitive and affective domain. The group is taking a leadership role in the efforts of the Ministry of Education of Cyprus to implement its eLearning strategy through a series of projects including topics, such as designing multimedia environments for science teaching and learning. The research group's work has received continuous financial support over the years from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation and the European Commission (through various programs, e.g., IST, Science and Society, FP 7). Finally, the ReSciTEG members have published papers related to all these research projects in many major journals (e.g., Science, Cognition and Instruction, Learning and Instruction, Journal of Research in Science Teaching).
Address: Universidad de Deusto Avenida de las Universidades 24, 48007 Bilbao (Biskaya, País Vasco), Spain
Web: http://www.deusto.es
Contact Person: Iratxe Mentxaka Sierra, Oihane Zarate González
E-Mail: iratxe.mentxaka@deusto.es, oihanezarate@deusto.es
Partner Telephone: +34 944 13 90 73
The University of Deusto is a private and fully recognized university with 997 members of staff and more than 12,000 students. Academic excellence of the University of Deusto is reflected in its commitment to innovative methods of learning, particularly in the new methodology of competence-based learning, own methodology of teaching, learning and assessment in a learner-based approach, and incorporation of new technologies as tools for quality education with an emphasis in meaningful learning and efficiency.
In Go-Lab, the Faculty of Engineering of UDEUSTO is represented by the WebLab-Deusto, Mobile Communications Research Group, and DeustoTech Learning. Since 2004, the Faculty of Engineering provides a remote laboratory WebLab-Deusto for technical curricula. The remote lab is integrated in the current teaching/learning with LMS, Facebook, and mobile devices. WebLab-Deusto offers different experiments in physics and technologies including logic games and one related to embed systems development. The group participates in many national and international projects, among others OLAREX, CLIPFLAX, E-Pragmatic, RexNet, CITA2, SocialTechBook, PiP-PDI, and sLabs.
The Mobile Communications Research Group hosts SmartLab, a mobile and pervasive computing laboratory, where prototypes of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence scenarios are designed, deployed and tested in order to experiment with future environments where intelligence is provided by surrounding objects, especially mobile phones. The group has a strong background in the application of Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence techniques to middleware for embed and mobile system in order to foster context-aware reactivity. MORElab participates in multiple projects, such as MUGGES, uService, CBDP, SABESS, PIRAmIDE, and ACROSS.
Address: Faulkes Telescope Project, School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Queen's Buildings, The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA,United Kingdom
Web: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/
Contact Person: Fraser Lewis
E-Mail: fraser.lewis68@gmail.com
Partner Telephone: +44 29 2087 4458
Cardiff University (CU) is recognised as one of Britain's leading teaching and research-intensive universities. CU is a member of the Russell Group and has approximately 20,000 undergraduate and 8000 postgraduate students, 6000 staff and an annual turnover of around €525M – making it the 12th largest university in the UK. World-leading research is conducted across every academic school. The University is among the top 5 in the UK in 14 research areas, and the top 10 in a further 11 areas. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), CU ranked 5th of all UK universities, and the School of Physics and Astronomy ranked 6th in the UK.
Cardiff attracted on average €70 million under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission for the co-funding of research projects, and continues to seek research grants and contracts under Horizon 2020. Cardiff’s Research, and Innovation Services department ensures that the academic community sustains strong links with business, industry, Government and other partners across Europe and beyond.
The Faulkes Telescope Project (FTP) is based within SEM at CU, and is an education partner of Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT). It currently provides web-based real-time access to 1,500 hours of observing time on two 2-metre telescopes located in Hawaii and Australia. This telescope time is dedicated to education and public outreach. The telescopes are available for teachers to be used as part of their classroom and extra-curricular activities, and are fully supported by a range of educational materials and a team of educators and astronomers. The FTP operates a wide range of educational programs with a strong emphasis on teacher training and engaging students in “real science”, often through Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE). Its philosophy is to actively engage learners, making them participants in a range of astronomical research projects, ranging from observations of the solar system to distant galaxies. Teacher training (both face-to-face and online) is a core component of the FTP educational philosophy.
PLATON is a two-year European project launched on September 2016. It aspires to provide teachers and school communities with a coherent teachers’ training framework which will update their current teaching practices. More particularly, PLATON aims to offer an open and innovative training framework to teachers of primary and secondary education which will focus on: