Author Archives: Agueda Gras

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About Agueda Gras

I am the Science Programme Manager of European Schoolnet. As Head of the Science Education Department at European Schoolnet, I am in charge of overseeing and coordinating all the STEM education projects in which European Schoolnet is involved, including day-to-day management of Scientix, the community for science education in Europe. I have a PhD in Astrophysics from Trinity College Dublin, which I carried out at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland.

From Village Institutes to STEM

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Famous educator John Dewey: ‘Education is not preparation for life, it’s life itself’. He was defending his opinion. When he came to visit our country, he realized that this was his dream when he saw the Village Institutes. The Village Institutes were designed to fulfil John Dewey’s idea of ​​combining work and education. Students were learning all life skills here. They built their own schools, houses, barracks, workplaces and fused production and education by building and living together.
In the light of this information, this lesson plan was prepared by making use of social sciences.

The image is owned by the author – (Attribution CC-BY)
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STEM Discovery Week 2019 – Best practices in using innovative STEM resources

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STEM Discovery Week 2019 is a joint international initiative that invites projects, organisations and schools across Europe and around the world, to celebrate studies and careers in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The tagline for this year’s campaign “Best practices in using innovative STEM resources” with the aim to highlight best practices in current STEM teaching across Europe through using innovative resources.

On the STEM Discovery Week 2019 blog, participants of the Scientix and the SYSTEMIC & Scientix competitions are invited to report on their STEM Discovery Week activities and actions.

To learn about the guidelines of participating, read the terms and conditions here:

http://www.scientix.eu/documents/10137/784662/STEM_Discovery_Week-Scientix-competition-guidelines-v3.pdf/397f6d15-63b1-48f1-98ae-55d10a828df6

This blog is also a platform for teachers and other education practitioners to share, exchange and interact about their STEM practices. We encourage you to explore the blog, see others teachers’ examples and get inspiration from the community for your teaching.

Thank you!

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200 inspirational blog posts by 94 different educators all around the world have now been published on the #STEMDiscoveryWeek blog! That’s amazing and it is all thanks to all those dedicated educators who have contributed to this blog with original articles about their activities. Big thanks go to everyone who have blogged here and/or supported this year’s campaign in any other way!

No new entries will be published from now on (until next year?), but you are still able to read all the posts that have been published so far for inspiration and ideas here! You can also still comment on those posts that have been published and engage in discussions with other bloggers here.

Please make sure you keep your account details and login for next year! This is the first time that participants in the campaign are invited to blog about their activities as part of the STEM Discovery Week, and it has clearly been successful as interest from educators shows. The blog is a perfect platform for sharing ideas, perhaps for the years to come as part of the STEM Discovery Week?

This year’s edition of the STEM Discovery Week is a record holder in terms of its participants’ level of interest and engagement. There were:

  • Over 800 activities organized,
  • in 40 countries across Europe and the world,
  • 200 blog posts already published on the STEM Discovery Week blog by 94 different authors,
  • more than 120,000 teachers, pupils and other people participating in activities.

Can we make STEM Discovery Week 2019 even more successful?

Stay tuned for news about the STEM Discovery Week on the online portal of Scientix, the community for science education in Europe, here.

See you next year!

539 activities registered for STEM Discovery Week in 34 countries before we kick off on Monday!

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539 activities in 34 countries are now published as part of the STEM Discovery Week campaign! The goals that were set for the campaign have, therefore, already been reached, namely to publish at least 500 activities in STEM education that are organised as part of the STEM Discovery Week.

Thanks for your dedicated support to the campaign and for spreading the message! Your support has been essential to the success of this campaign!

Now there are 21 projects, 37 organisations and 32 schools confirmed as official partners of the STEM Discovery Week. And more partners are joining us every week!

Please note that anyone can still upload activities to the map and we would of course like to see as many of them ass possible before we kick off on Monday 23 April.

Next week, during the STEM Discovery Week, we will connect live via video to selected activities happening in different countries in Europe! We have published a provisional calendar on the Scientix website with the scheduled video streams, here: http://www.scientix.eu/events/campaigns/sdw18/streaming

In addition, several webinars are scheduled for STEM Discovery Week that you may want to attend and/or share.

First, Scientix and STEM Alliance are organising a webinar at 17:00 CEST on 26 April. During this webinar, we will talk about how companies can help schools to promote girls‘ participation in STEM. Sarah Atkinson, Vice President, Communications and Executive Sponsor for Gender Diversity at CA Technologies, EMEA, and Sara Cardeira, who is is part of the Corporate Citizenship team of IBM in Portugal, are speakers during the webinar.

Read more about the webinar and register, here: http://www.stemalliance.eu/webinars/sdw2018-women-in-stem

Second, the Education Gateway is organising a webinar on STE(A)M education on 25 April at 17:00 CEST. The speaker at this webinar is Kristóf Fenyvesi, PhD, who is a researcher of STEAM Trans- and Multidisciplinary Learning and Contemporary Cultural Studies in Finland, at University of Jyväskylä’s Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies.

Read more about the webinar and register, here: https://groups.schooleducationgateway.eu/101/pages/page/383

We look forward seeing your activities next week and keep sharing the word about the STEM Discovery Week using the official hashtag: #STEMDiscoveryWeek

Next-Lab competition: Learning is more fun when you get a prize!

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Are you excited to hear all about our brand new competition?

This year, Next-Lab decided to participate in the STEM Discovery Week 2018 with a very hands-on competition, meant to reward the best class implementation* of the Go-Lab ILSs!

So, if you are organising a class implementation between February-April 2018, then you are eligible to participate to the Next-Lab competition!

The first thing you need to do is to submit your class implementation activity to the STEM Discovery Week’s activities map. In the form, and when asked to, please indicate clearly that you are taking part to the Next-Lab competition.

Once you carry out your implementation, we will get back to you via email with some additional questions regarding the content if your activity, the resources you have used and the impact on your students.

In order to enter the contest, your activity will need to fulfil the following criteria:

  • The submitted class implementation has to take place between March-April 2018
  • Create a new ILS or readapt an existing one for your implementation
  • A minimum of 15 students need to take part to the class implementation

The winner (1) of the Next-Lab competition will be invited to attend the Next-Lab autumn school that will take place in Estonia in September 2018. Flight, hotel and subsidies will be covered entirely by the project.

Looking forward to your submissions!

*  In a class implementation a minimum of 15 students, under the guidance of their teacher, are making use of the entire or parts on an ILS (new or adapted) for the entire duration or parts of their didactic hour.