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Xplora: European science education portal
Author: Alexa Joyce

The Xplora portal was launched during the Science in Society Forum organised in Brussels, 9-11 March 2005. It endeavours to be a major European hub for the science education community with a wealth of resources, tools and information for science teachers.

Xplora, the web based European science education portal will use the most advanced communication technology to manage the PENCIL project, set up the exchanges between partners and enable continuous monitoring and demonstration of the projects toward the science teachers' community.

PENCIL stands for Permanent European Resource Centre for Informal Learning, and the xplora.org portal aims to be the gateway for information on how to combine 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.

The project aims to raise young people’s interest in science and improve science teaching. Pencil is also part of a wider group of projects christened NUCLEUS involving major science organisations such as CERN in Geneva, the European Space Agency and other partners.

PENCIL and Nucleus are results of the DG Research call for proposals for the "European Science Education Initiative," aiming to provide Europe with 700,000 additional researchers by 2010, by encouraging more young people to take up science at university. The project is supported by the European Commission, which has awarded more than €4m to the PENCIL consortium.



 

Contact:
Alexa Joyce:
alexa.joyce@eun.org

Portal:
www.xplora.org