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PENCIL Science Teachers Conference, 14-16 June 2007, Technopolis© the Flemish Science Center, Mechelen, Belgium

You are invited to join science teachers from across Europe to take part in the final PENCIL Teachers Conference. This is a unique opportunity to participate in workshops and debates on how schools and science centres can come together at the forefront of science education.

The Conference will give concrete examples of best practice from 14 European pilot projects, covering a wide range of topics and student age groups. These projects have been tested and evaluated in schools, as well as in science centres and museums. Using these results, the Conference offers teachers pragmatic guidelines on the following key areas:

• The introduction of new topics in science;
• New approaches to teaching and learning traditional subjects; and
• Building relationships between schools and science centres and museums.

This Science Teachers Conference is organised within the PENCIL project (Permanent EuropeaN resource Centre for Informal Learning), a large scale European project, funded by the European Commission's Directorate General for Research as part of Science and Society, to develop and test innovative methods for science teaching via a number of pilot projects.

PENCIL, which is coordinated by Ecsite (The European Network of Science Centres and Museums), combines field programmes and academic research with the aim of identifying the keys of success that transform informal science activities into innovative quality tools for science teaching. 14 science centres and museums have created mini-networks involving schools, pupils, teachers associations, research laboratories, educational authorities and education and science communication specialists to run Pilot Projects on new ways to conduct science teaching.

A web based European science education portal, called Xplora.org, uses the most advanced communication technology to manage the project, set up the exchanges between partners and enable continuous monitoring and demonstration of the projects toward the science teachers' community. The members of this network are the core users of Xplora.

The first PENCIL Science Teachers Conference was held at CERN, in Geneva in June 2006. After the success of this initial event, the second and final Teachers Conference in Mechelen will use the 14 PENCIL pilot projects as a starting point to highlight best practise through workshops and presentations, and to spark debate on the issues that arise when schools and science centres work together.

Download the full programme of the conference (PDF file, 431 KB), see also the plan of Technopolis - floor 0 (PDF file, 633 KB) and floor -1 (PDF file, 550 KB).

The on-line registration has been closed.