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# Received from Colin Marsden, University of Toulouse, France (E.U.)

A visit to the Airbus assembly lines in Toulouse will be organised during the forthcoming ECTN meeting, during the afternoon of Saturday April 24. Details may be found in the "Late News" section of the ECTN.info website. It will be necessary for anyone interested in the visit to register, by email.

From : Pascal Mimero
Webmaster of EChemTest.net / eask.be and ECTN NewsLetter editor

1. Anti-Spam fighting and the NewsLetter

As a consequence of the higher security level required on most of the Network/Mail servers, and the anti-spam and firewall parameters, I'd like to mention that approximately 10% of the whole mailing list is subject to rejection for spam suspicion, while sending the NewsLetter. Fixing this point individually - it represents an average of 40 emails every 2 months - for each of the rejected email, is a time consuming and worhtless activity. Though, if you want to maintain the service and receive the NewsLetter regularly, I would greatly appreciate if you can ask your Webmaster to give the way to the 2 following emails : 
"Mimero @EChemTest.net" and "pmimero @wanadoo.fr". 

Thank you very much for your understanding and your cooperation.

2. Junkmail and "@EChemTest.net"

Please pay attention, a number of junk-emails is generated using your own address book while surfing the Net with your Web-browser, or while writting/sending emails to your colleagues. I'd like to draw your attention on the fact that it exists only ONE email address using our EChemTest domain name, it is

Mimero @ EChemTest.net

used for the various emails sent and available on the different websites. Anything else coming from "Contact@", "Webmaster@", "Info@", "Abuse@", etc ... is NOT a valid email ! Avoid it, do not open it nor download the ".pif" or ".zip" attachement provided, BUT trash it directly.

My most sincere apologies for any inconvenience.

ECTN Information and Project

Anthony Smith, ESCPE Lyon, France (E.U.)

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 ECTN Association

The Association General Assembly will be held on Tuesday 27 April 2004 at 11.00, during the ECTN plenary meeting in Toulouse. Would all members who cannot be present at this general assembly, and who would like to vote by proxy, please arrange to do this. All members have been sent the appropriate form, but if you have not received it, please contact Marie-Jeanne Feucht (feucht@cpe.fr).

Please note that members have until 6th April 2004 to popose items for the agenda of this general assembly. In accordance with our statutes, no resolution may be passed by the General Assembly if it concerns any point which has not been specified in the agenda.

The Association will be applying for two projects under the Socrates Accompanying measures action:

1. The first project is for funding to allow the scientific and technological thematic networks to hold a forum in 2005 - similar to the TechnoTN forum held in February 2004 (details were given in the last newsletter). The idea is that the ECTN Association will be the contract holder and the Engineering network E4 will be the coordinator.
2. The second projet is a response to the call for proposals under the joint initiative of Socrates Accompanying Measures and the Tempus programme, concerning Europe-wide Participation Projects contributing to the Realisation of the European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process). One of the themes of the call is: the development of European cooperation in accreditation in certain disciplines.

As you are aware, we have been working on the development of a European label for the chemistry Eurobachelor. This project proposal would provide the funding necessary for us to proceed rapidly with this development. The ECTN Association will be the project contract holder, and Terry Mitchell will be the project coordinator. This proposal will be discussed in detail at the ECTN plenary meeting in Toulouse.

ECTN Network

For this newsletter, the ECTN network information concerns the forthcoming plenary meeting - see next section:

ECTN Plenary Meeting, Toulouse, FR 24 - 28th April 2004

We will have a record number of participants at this meeting. Currently there are 118 inscriptions. The local organisers are doing an excellent job and we will all have a very exciting scientific and cultural time in Toulouse.

Information about the meeting (accommodation, programme, participants) is available on the meeting web site http://www.ectn.info/ . This site is regularly up-dated so please keep visiting it for the latest information.

Don't forget to register if you wish to visit the Airbus assembly lines.

The programme includes a number of plenary lectures that will be of interest to us all as well as numerous working group sessions and working group presentations. This year, it is the Chemistry and Cultural Heritage working group that has a plenary workshop, I am sure that those of us not involved directly in this group will find this to be a fascinating session.

The meeting will end with a session on future activities - so come with your ideas and with suggestions for partcipants in the various working groups that will be established. Ask your institutional ECTN contact person for a copy of the ECTN renewal application for 2004 - 2006 if you have not already received a copy.

Would all meeting participants please access the on-line EChemTest before coming to Toulouse - we would like to receive your comments on the tests at the meeting. Contact Pascal Mimero for an account to access the tests.

EChemTest

Pascal Mimero, ESCPE Lyon, France (E.U.)

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General information

Several items of information are reported this month, but the most IMPORTANT is 

>>>> the Demo Tests are back on-line ! 

I'm pleased to inform you that our new Test server is now implemented at the University of Perugia, Italy - thank you very much to Prof. Antonio Lagana and his team, for accepting this duty. I'd like to make a special mention to Carlo Manuali for the Technical support. He will be assisted by Valentina Piermarini for the knowledge on the QM Perception environment Thanks again to our colleagues.

To the Chemistry Community : As previously announced, we are seeking volunteers / universities willing to setup a trial Demo session with a classroom. It will help you to evaluate the level of your classroom entering or leaving a specific study level ; and of course help us to improve the quality of our test and service. Contact us Mimero@EChemTest.net .

Demo Tests back on-line

The full set of Demo Tests in English now integrates the comments made after the beta phase, as well as the new Analytical test with informative feedbacks.

Everybody is welcome to access the free tests on-line. If you want to proceed, contact me for an account. 

Certification Database

During the EChemTest workshop to be held at our plenary meeting in Toulouse, time will be allocated to each working group to get a final chance to correct, adjust, polish the certification
test before release for the beta-test period. This important phase will last till the end of 2004 and will have restricted access only.

Our IT experts, Dr. Janna Velder (Organic Chem Group / Köln, DE), Dr. Valentina Piermarini (Physical Chem Group / Perugia, IT) and Dr. Costas Efstathiou (Analytical Chem Group / Athens, GR) will assist the Working Groups in running this review.

Individual accounts will be created for each members involved in this beta-test project, and a beta-test form report will be used to optimize the testing period.

EChemTest Developement

In order to develop and improve our tests, we are seeking new volunteers in each field of the EChemTest to join the working groups in: "General - Analytical - Inorganic - Organic - Physical Chemistry". If you are interested in joining us, please contact directly the group leaders via the EChemTest website at www.echemtest.net ; select your language to access the information page and then access the group leader's email.

Thank you in advance for your support and for your future collaboration.

ECTN Working Group Reports

Contributions

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Teacher / Teaching Evaluation 

Received from: Leila Birolo, University of Napoli, Italy (E.U.) - March 25, 2004

• Is it useful to have an evaluation by students?
• When and how should be the evaluation carried out?
• Is there any common procedure to be followed?

These are the main questions the working group on Teacher/Teaching Evaluation by Students had to deal with during is intermediate meeting in Naples last October, and a major goal was clear: the need of emphasising the relevance of the evaluation procedure among the teachers, that will certainly generate a better feedback from students. 

Read the full report (PDF / Kb)

Newly Appointed University Chemistry Teachers

Received from: Paul Yates, Keele University, United Kingdom (E.U.) - March 25, 2004

The group held its first meeting in Krakow, Poland on the weekend of 7th and 8th February 2004. This was attended by six members of the Working Group, from Bulgaria, Finland, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The existing training for new members of teaching staff in these countries was outlined. We were also able to consider information from France and Italy which had been submitted from the relevant Working Group members. It was agreed to develop a questionnaire which had been piloted and to distribute this at the plenary meeting in Toulouse.

Interest was expressed in the accreditation of new staff by means of a portfolio submission, and this will be explored at future meetings.

During the meeting the group also developed detailed proposals for a summer school to be held possibly in June 2005. Topics to be covered would include European developments in chemical education, portfolios and accreditation, context and problem based learning, diversity issues, the role of the teacher, European bodies (e.g. ECTN, FECS), presentation skills, assessment and evaluation, EU funding, online resources, industrial placements, employability in the European chemical industry and the image of chemistry. There would be particular emphasis on networking and working as an international group.

The proposals will be considered in more detail at the Toulouse meeting.

Group Leader: Paul Yates, Keele University, UK
Members: Kalina Mutafchieva, University of Chemical Technology & Metallurgy, Sofia, BG ; Colin Marsden, Universite Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, FR ; Tuija Jokela, University of Helsinki, FI ; Paolo Todesco, University of Bologna, IT ; Iwona Maciejowska, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland ; Piotr Kirszensztejn, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, PL ; Bernd Goldfuss, University of Koeln, DE ; Antonio Lagana, University of Perugia, IT ; Bengt Jergil, Lund University, SE ; Mark Overhand, Leiden University, NL.

The next meeting will be held on 24th and 25th of April 2004, at the ECTN 2004 Meeting in Toulouse, France.

Tutorial on Grid Computing for Molecular Simulators

Received from: Antonio Lagana, University of Perugia, Italy  (E.U.) - March 25, 2004

Among the activities of the multimedia group of ECTN is the assemblage of a virtual chemistry prelaboratory based on a portal using a virtual reality environment. This virtual laboratory is based on the use of "human-size virtual reality" (HVR) and "Molecular-size virtual reality" (MVR) environments. The combined use of both environments is made possible by Grid computing technologies. The Perugia laboratory of the Multimedia working group has organized jointly with the working groups of the COST in Chemistry D23 Action (with the financial support of COST in Chemistry) a tutorial on Grid technologies to be held in Assisi (Italy) on May 13-14, 2004. The programme of the tutorial is:

Programme : TUTORIAL ON GRID TECHNOLOGIES
S. MARIA DEGLI ANGELI (ASSISI) 13-14 MAY/2004

Thursday 13 May
14:00-16:00 R. Buyya "Introduction to Grids and The Gridbus Toolkit" 
16:00-17:00 User experiences from D23 (Jan Smydke, Timo Fleig, Luuk Visscher, Loriano Storchi, Fermin Huarte, Elda Rossi)
17:00-17:30 Coffe Break 
17:30-19:00 M. Danelutto "Applications of the Grid and the coordination language ASSIST" 
19:00 Dinner

Friday 14 May
08:30-10:30 R. Buyya "Constructing eScience Applications using the Gridbus Toolkit"
10:30-11:00 Coffe Break
11:00-13:00 R. Lovas "Applications of the Grid and parallel development environment P-GRADE "

The Chemistry "Euromaster": Fact or Fiction? Some Thoughts and Recommendations - An ECTN Discussion Paper

Received from: T.N. Mitchell, University of Dortmund, Germany (E.U.) - March 25, 2004

"The Helsinki Master Conference of March 2003 provided the following recommendation: Master study programmes should involve ...

This paper discusses the emerging and future situation as far as the development of Master programmes is concerned. It appears necessary at the outset to define four types of Master programme: ..."

This document contains some first reflections on the topic of Euromaster, and comments will be very welcome! Read the full paper : Euromaster (PDF / Kb)

If you want to react, please contact Terry Mitchell at <terence.mitchell@uni-dortmund.de >

Image of Chemistry, the website ...

Received from: Hagga Schmalz, University of Cologne, Germany (E.U.) - March 25, 2004

The website of the Image of Chemistry group has been updated! 

Have a look at it >>>>>> www.cheminsight.de 

More materials have been collected and entered into the frame of the web resource, with particular focus directed to the “Preschool building blocks” materials by Gisela Lück (The Chemistry Gallery/Pre-School corner, Chemiesammlung/Vorschulkinder) and the transparencies series by the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie. 

The translations into English have also been successfully continued. As soon as the translations have been entered, both the German and the English version of the website will be having the same content. We would like to invite all ECTN members to help us with the translation from English into French, Portuguese, Greek, and all other languages spoken in the ECTN range to help us to make the website available for all interested in the member countries. 

Comments and suggestions for further contributions (materials etc) should be send to the leader of the Image group ( Hagga Schmalz, Universität zu Köln, Institut für Organische Chemie, Greinstr. 4, D-50939 Köln, schmalz@uni-koeln.de ). 

ECTN Dissemination

Contributions

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ECTN Editorial board

Pascal Mimero, Lyon, France (E.U.)

Following a suggestion made in Vienna (Management Commettee meeting - Spetembre 2003), it was decided in Reading (MC meeting - January 2004) to create an ECTN editorial board.
All together, a number of publication either in electronic or paper format is edited each year, starting with the present one, the ECTN NewsLetter. We will run some brainstorming, dealing
with logos, a graphic charte, an editorial line, etc ... in order to identify clearly the ECTN publications and to get a general publication/edition policy.

A short communication will be presented at our next plenary meeting in Toulouse, France (April 2004) - www.ectn.info .

Conferences Announcements

Contributions and NewsLetter Editor

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 ECTN 2004 - Toulouse, France (E.U.), 23-28 April 2004

Received from: Serge Attali, University of Toulouse, France (E.U.) - March 22, 2004

Dear Colleagues and friends,

Spring is now here (at least in our hearts despite the events) and our web site (www.ectn.info) contains new important things. So please consult it as soon as possible, and you'll find everything which is necessary for the best welcome in Toulouse. We're happy since this meeting will be the more important relatively to the number of participants. 

We do hope that everything will seem OK for you. In case of any questions please write me at sergia@cict.fr, and I'll do my best with the other organizers to help you. 

Waiting the pleasure to welcome you

Avec mes amicales salutations et mes souhaits de bon voyage

Serge (for the local organization committee)

Multimedia Workshop at the Annual ECTN Conference, Toulouse April 24, 2004

Received from: Antonio Lagana and Antonio Riganelli, University of Perugia, Italy  (E.U.) - March 25, 2004

Centre de Congres Pierre Baudis
11, esplanade Compans-Caffarelli, BP 889
31685 Toulouse cedex, France

The Multimedia group has organized at the annual ECTN conference a workshop on the progress of its activities. The contributions  will range from virtual laboratory to wirtual campus projects as well as from teaching and learning multimedia units to more fundamental questions on chemistry e-learning. The contributions wil be delivered by

• Gustavo Avitabile (Department of Chemistry, University Federico II, Napoli, Italy),
• Evangelia Varella (Department of Chemistry, University of Tessaloniki, Tessaloniki, Greece), 
• Dimitra Kovala (Department of Chemistry, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece), 
• Truls Groneberg (Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway),
• Kristiina Wahalla (Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland), 
• Peter Salzer (Department of Chemistry, University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany), 
• Johannes Froehlich (Department of Chemistry, Technical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria) 
• Jana Copikova (Department of Chemistry, University of Prague, Prague, Czech Republic)

Antonio Riganelli

FACS X -  10th Edition of the French American Chemical Society, 2-6 Juin 2002, Charleston, South Carolina (USA)

Received from: Jean-Marie Beau, University Paris Sud, Paris, France (E.U.)

The next French American Chemical Society "Conference on Synthetic, Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry" will be held on June 4-10, 2004 in Charleston.

contact : Jean-Marie BEAU <jmbeau@icmo.u-psud.fr>

The 2nd Conference of EDIFE and The 2nd IOSTE Symposium in Southern EuropeScience and Technology Education at cross roads: meeting the challenges of the 21th century

Received from: Agapi Vavouraki, Education Research Centre of Greece, Athens, Greece (E.U.)

url: http://www.kee.gr  ; contact: Agapi Vavouraki <avavouraki@hol.gr>

Reminder List

• ECTN 2004 - Plenary Meeting
  April 23-28, 2004 - Toulouse, France
  url: http://www.ectn.info ;
• 7th Dresden conference - Chemistry Education in the European HigherEducation Area
  June 14-15, 2004 - Dresden, Germany
  url: http://www.gdch.de/vas/tagungen/tagungen2004/5558.htm 
• 18th ICCE - 18th International Conference on Chemical Education
  August 3-8, 2004 - Istanbul, Turkey
  url: http://www.turchemsoc.org/icce/web/ ; e-mail: haleb@ttnet.net.tr or icce2004@marmara.edu.tr ; 
• 7th ECRICE - 7th European Conference of Research on Chemical Education
  August 24-28, 2004 - Ljubljana, Slovenia
  url: http://www.pef.uni-lj.si/7ecrice/  ; 
• ICCSA 2004 - International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications
• XXII International Conference on Polyphenols
  August 25-28, 2004 - Helsinki, Finland
  url: www.helsinki.fi/icp2004 ; contact: orgkm-icp2004@helsinki.fi

In brief ...

Contributions

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Conferences Database - Conference Alerts !

Pascal Mimero, Lyon, France (E.U.)

Conferencealerts.com is a website dedicated to conference's announcements : http://www.conferencealerts.com . 

List of worldwide events are given and presented either as a chronology or as a topic list. They offer a service of a conference email alert, based on your selection of topics. You then receive a monthly report with the events corresponding to your interest profile, and also few independent emails presenting in details some featured conference related to your selection.

For example, I setup the following "interest profile" : education, computer assisted, chemical education, organic chemistry. See how looks a monthly alert with selected conferences <click>, and below 2 examples of recent featured conference alerts :

---

object: 3rd Global Conference: The Idea of Education
date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 20:15:41 -0800
from: alerts@conferencealerts.com

3rd Global Conference, The Idea of Education
Monday 9th August - Wednesday 11th August 2004, Prague, Czech Republic

Call for Papers (please cross post where appropriate)

This cross disciplinary conference continues the work of the Idea of Education research project launched in 2002 to provide a vigorous forum for the examination and evaluation of university and college education. Committed to the tradition of liberal education, the inherent value of the pursuit of learning and the principle that knowledge must be an end in itself, the forum will use the conference series to broadly examine the nature and aims of institutes of higher education, their guiding principles, their practical functions, and their role in society.

In particular papers, reports, presentations, and workshops are invited on any of the following themes (...):

---

object: Third Global Conference: Virtual Learning & Higher Education
date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:32:23 -0800
from: alerts@conferencealerts.com

Third Global Conference, Virtual Learning & Higher Education
Friday 13th - Sunday 15th August 2004, Prague, Czech Republic

Keynote Speaker: Dr Jim TerKeurst
Research and Business Development Manager
International Centre for Computer Games and Virtual Entertainment (IC CAVE) University of Abertay, Dundee, Scotland 

'Welcome to the Magical IT Kingdom: Restructuring the University for Virtual Learning'

Call for Papers (please cross post where appropriate)

Higher Education institutions have been criticized for living in the past; some have even proclaimed that the University has lost its relevance. In the midst of these analyses and criticisms, the advent of Information and Communication Technologies in today's universities/colleges is seen as a promising development. What future has Higher Education when the virtual world of on-line education has so much more to offer? The aim of this conference will be to examine Virtuality within Higher Education in an attempt to critique both its 
essential characteristics and its future possibilities to influence the education of adult learners.

Being such a broad topic, Virtuality defies a definitive list of sub-topics but the following list is indicative of the envisaged topics covered within this Call for Papers: (...)

What's coming next ?

NewsLetter Editor

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June/July 2004

Next Working Group Reports
- Food Chemistry (Ivonne Delgadillo, Aveiro PT), 
- Remediation (Milt Karayannis, Ioannina GR),
- Biological Chemistry (Arne van der Gene, Leiden NL)
- Tuning II - final report (Terry Mitchel, Dortmund, FR)
- Links with Schools (Ingo Eilks, DE)
- EChemTest (Pascal Mimero, Lyon, FR)

- ECTN Plenary Meeting and ECTN Association General Assembly (Tony Smith, Lyon, FR)
- 7th Dresden Conference (Terry Mitchell, Dortmund, DE)