From the 23rd to the 25th of May, we held, at the European Schoolnet (EUN) headquarters, the 4^th Science Project Workshop in the Future Classroom Lab (4th SPW@FCL) in combination with the 4th Scientix Spring Teachers Workshop.

The event was led by Scientix and brought together 32 teachers from 25 different countries. Aside from the teachers selected to participate in the 4th SPW@FCL, we hosted two other groups of participants. On the one hand, the Scientix Ambassadors and Deputy Ambassadors who could not attend the previous Scientix Spring Workshops and for whom we organized the 4th Teachers Panel Spring Workshop and, on the other hand, the new Scientix Deputy Ambassadors who were attending the 4th Teachers kick-off during the FCL event.

One of the main objectives of the Future Classroom Lab events is to bring together STEM teachers and introduce them to collaborating projects to promote integration. As means to do that, on Saturday, all participants were introduced to several other projects such as InGenious, GoLab, Global Excursion and the Intel Science Fair Evaluation through presentations led by Gina Mihai and Agueda Gras.

Victor Perez showing the Future Classroom Lab

All participants seemed delighted with the visit to the Future Classroom Lab: our fully equipped teaching and learning space designed as a Living Laboratory for how ICT can be implemented in schools. Victor Perez led all participants through the different areas and let them experiment with different gadgets. Teachers became students for a day!

Premysl Velek was in charge of the presentation on Science where can it take you, a collaboration between EUN and The European Petrochemical Association: a project which goal is to attract young people to science and show them the different career paths they can take when studying science.

For the new Scientix Teachers Panel members, a kick-off session provided them with a general explanation of the Scientix project and of their roles and tasks. I took charge on showing them their duties on Scientix dissemination, Scientix portal support, attendance to meetings, reporting of activities, mentoring and teamwork. We hope the amount of information received did not exhaust them too much.

The participants on the 4th Teachers Spring Workshop stream had to attend the session Scientix from November to now, where they got the most recent updates on the project as well as another session on the Ambassadors tasks review, which consisted in a very interactive meeting where we went over the activities performed, clarified any doubts in regard to their duties and showed examples and initiatives that could be useful in their roles as Scientix Deputy Ambassadors.

Participants enjoying the Lego Workshop.

The rest of the participants had the opportunity to enjoy different seminars. We carried on a Go-Lab centered workshop and even a Lego workshop, where the attendees could learn several educational exercises to share with their pupils by using Lego materials (while having fun playing with colorful plastic bricks).

The last session before the summary of the event was a workshop focused on developing lesson plans on the Future Classroom Lab which allowed the teachers to present their own plans in front of their colleagues and discuss their different opinions and views on the plans.

Finally, no EUN event would be done without a tour of the city (specially since that same weekend the Jazz marathon was being held all over town) and without a couple of networking dinners, where teachers could get to know each other better and exchange ideas and thoughts on science education.

As always, it was a pleasure to meet so many teachers interested in improving STEM education in Europe and, of course, to greet the old and new faces from Scientix. We also counted with the collaboration of 12 Italian stagiaires which helped us carry on the event smoothly and effectively. All in all, a great success!

Article written by: Marina Jiménez Iglesias, Project Officer, European Schoolnet

Tags: Brussels, Future Classroom Lab, Scientix, Workshop