Expressions of Intent for IPY 2007-2008 Activities

Expression of Interest Details

PROPOSAL INFORMATION

Web-based educational tool for schools on polar issues  (EDTOOL)

Outline
EDTOOL will create an educational tool for lower graduates (age 13-18) world wide, which will include all six IPY themes. The pupils can work as scientists by combining background knowledge, scientific data, as well as hands-on learning activities. They will make their own scientific reports on the IPY issues, and be provided with links to resources. The aim is to inspire pupils to seek information about the polar regions so they can increase their understanding of polar issues. The pupils write a report using a web-based report-generating tool. They use information and material from the scientific findings of IPY work and other polar factual resources, and combine this with results from hands-on educational activities by using for example GLOBE-protocols (www.globe.gov) or various national solutions. The pupils then assess and conclude on the basis of the scientist’s and their own findings. The EDTOOL solution will be tailored for IPY with six report-generating tools, one for each of the themes. It will utilise both existing resources on polar issues and new findings from the IPY projects as well as tools and hands-on educational activities made by various organisations in different countries. Guidelines on how to use them for polar issues will be provide. Such an educational tool will be a key contribution to reaching IPY’s overall educational goals, as well as contribute to the outreach goals. The EDTOOL site will list all reports as they are completed and the pupils can therefore learn from each other’s work. The scientific editors for the solution can communicate with the pupils’ schools and give them feedback on their work. An e-mail based technical help-desk service will be provided for the teachers. All support and technical solutions are based on extensive experience in designing and implementing such tools. This overall solution combines the experience, expertise and existing solutions from educational systems, scientific work and web-based solutions, developed and tested in several polar countries over the last decade into a modern educational tool for IPY. The partners include institutions with extensive scientific knowledge on polar issues like Norwegian Polar Institute (NP) and Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), the formal educational boards of Norway and South Africa and GLOBE Europe including Arctic GLOBE coordinators with expertise on hands-on activities. In addition NILU has several years of experience with development, testing and operation of various advanced technical web-solutions for other educational programs similar to that planned in this project. This will ensure: -Scientific and educational top expertise -Years of experience with hands-on education -Coverage of both polar regions and all IPY themes -Technical detailed experience and knowledge on building and hosting the solution.

What significant advance(s) in relation to the IPY themes and targets can be anticipated from this project?
The aim is to familiarise the pupils with the scientific methods used by researchers through fact-finding, experiments, discussions and report writing. EDTOOL will consist of six different report-generating set-ups, one for each of the IPY themes. Each of them will provide links to facts relevant for that specific theme, based on existing sources as well as new facts generated through the IPY projects. In addition there will be links to existing hands-on educational projects and activities which the pupils can perform and include in their report, and these will be chosen according to relevance for each of the themes.

What international collaboration is involved in this project?
The core solution will be coordinated and built by the Norwegian partners who have extensive experience with such solutions. The specifications, testing and implementation will be done with GLOBE and South African partners. The GLOBE USA and GLOBE Iceland Arctic coordinators as well as GLOBE Europe will be part of the core team.

FIELD ACTIVITY DETAILS

Geographical location(s) for the proposed field activities:
Not relevant for this project.

Approximate timeframe(s) for proposed field activities:
Arctic: n/a
Antarctic: n/a

Significant facilities will be required for this project:
Not relevant for this project

Will the project leave a legacy of infrastructure?
Not relevant for this project.

How is it envisaged that the required logistic support will be secured?

Has the project been "endorsed" at a national or international level?
The Expression of Intent is submitted to the Research Council of Norway.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND STRUCTURE

Is the project a short-term expansion (over the IPY 2007-2008 timeframe) of an existing plan, programme or initiative or is it a new autonomous proposal?
New
This is a new proposal, but builds on solutions and experience from several previous national and international projects. It will also be incorporated in national plans wherever possible. The plan is to continue supporting it also after the IPY period, connected to other educational solutions provided by governments and other national bodies.

How will the project be organised and managed?
The project will be coordinated by NILU, and the partners in the core team will be NP, GLOBE Europe and the Arctic GLOBE coordinators of Iceland and USA, and educational boards of both Norway and South Africa. This consortium will integrate scientific expertise on polar issues (NP, NILU and GLOBE Arctic coordinators) with the long term experience of web-based tools (NILU) and hands-on and learning-through-doing activities for lower graduates (GLOBE, South-Africa and Norway). Since this is a construction of a web-based solution it will follow standardised procedures for building, testing and implementation of such advanced international solutions. The project will require active involvement by teachers and pupils in the polar regions and elsewhere for input, testing and implementation.

What are the initial plans of the project for addressing the education, outreach and communication issues outlined in the Framework document?
Since this is an educational and outreach project no further information is submitted here.

What are the initial plans of the project to address data management issues (as outlined in the Framework document)?
All the links to background material and data as well as reports written by the pupils will be recorded in an Oracle database, since the solution will be a fully dynamic web-solution. Reports are stored in XML as an intermediate format, allowing for creation of reports in a non-sequential manner as well as on-the-fly rendering of reports in multiple formats (e.g. html, pdf).

How is it proposed to fund the project?
Funding will be sought from the Norwegian Research Council, the Ministry of Education and the European Commission. However, since the solution will both build on comprehensive experience and existing solutions, the funding requirements are lower than what it would cost to implement the solution from scratch.

Is there additional information you wish to provide?
Although a new project, it builds heavily on experience gained from previous and ongoing projects; e.g. the Norwegian Environmental educational network (www.miljolare.no/english) and the Arctic POPs www.nilu.no/web/arcticpops. The latter project was a unique 4 year educational circumpolar projects, coordinated by GLOBE Norway and NILU in cooperation with GLOBE USA (www.globe.gov), where pupils contributed to the scientific work on brominated flame retardants in the Arctic region. A solution that enables pupils to make their own scientific reports in the area of atmospheric issues will be completed in 2005 as part of ACCENT, www.accent-network.org, and EDTOOL will build on this to make a more comprehensive and polar specific solution.

PROPOSER DETAILS

Dr Inga Fløisand
PO Box 100


NO-2027
Norway

Tel: +47 63898000
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Other project members and their affiliation

Other Information