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Plenary meeting 2007

There are many interesting plenary lectures, focussed working group sessions, and an Image of Chemistry workshop planned for this meeting. In addition, ECTN Association members will be voting for a new Administrative Council. Make sure you register before the deadline. The meeting will commence at 9.00 on Thursday 12 April 2007 and end at 14.00 on Saturday 14 April 2007. Participants are expected to arrive on Wednesday 11 April. The ECTN will cover accommodation and subsistence expenses, but not travel expenses, for the nights of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Saturday night accommodation will be reimbursed for those who require it.

You should register for the meeting as soon as possible and in any case before February 15^th 2007.
From Maria Fernandez-Berridi (local organizer): Few days after the deadline, will be given the information about hotel rooms assignment.

TechnoTN 2007

As announced in the last newsletter, the TechnoTN Forum 2007 will take place in Brussels on 4^th and 5^th May 2007. The details of the meeting and a registration form have now been published. (www.upv.es/TechnoTN). This year the themes of the Forum will be:

• How to attract students from the secondary level to scientific studies.
• Industry/Innovation/Impact
• Qualification/accreditation in science and engineering.

If you would like to attend, one or two places are still available – please contact Tony Smith before 28^th February 2007.

Management Committee Meeting, Brussels BE, January 27, 2007

The recent meeting of the ECTN Management Committee (27 January 2007) in Brussels agreed to admit the following new members of the network:

• University of Bath, UK

• Karel de Grote Hogeschool, Antwerp, BE

• Romanian Chemical Society

• Royal Flemish Chemical Society

• Association Nacional de Quimica de Espagna (ANQUE)

We welcome these new members and look forward to working together with them in the ECTN4 project.

All members should note that to take part in the new Erasmus programme (2007-2013), institutions must have an Erasmus University Charter (EUC). All institutions must apply for a renewal of this charter and the deadline is 28 February 2007. Please make sure your university is aware of this otherwise you will not be able to participate in any Erasmus activities (Thematic networks, student exchange, intensive programmes, etc.).

There is going to be an opportunity for Thematic Networks to apply for Erasmus Mundus funding to extend their activities outside Europe. The call for proposals is expected to be published at the end of February 2007, with an application deadline of 31^st May. The application should involve about 15 non-European partners from at least 10 countries. The project duration will correspond to the lifetime of the current TN project (for the ECTN this is until September 2009).

The ECTN Management Committee agreed that the ECTN should make an application.

I invite all ECTN members to contact me with ideas concerning the activities we should include in the application. The activities should be related to the activities already in the ECTN4 contract.

The Management Committee agreed to the creation of a new working group, to be called Project Information Management, led by Marek Frankowicz, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, PL. This working group will fulfil the role of project outcomes valorisation and dissemination, amongst other activities, which is part of the ECTN4 contract. The group will be established in San Sebastian where it will meet to establish its strategy and future activities. 

I look forward to seeing you in San Sebastian.

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The next ECTNA Administrative Council meeting and ECTN Management Committee meeting will take place on October 2007 in Palermo IT. Please contact Hans-Günther Schmalz (ECTNA) or Tony Smith (ECTN) if you wish to make any suggestions concerning the 2007 Plenary meeting or if you have any items you wish the Management Committee to discuss.

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News from the Front ...

The final report on the Eurobachelor project has gone to Brussels, and we are waiting for a reaction. But the Eurobachelor® lives on, of course. At the end of January in Brussels the Administrative Council of the Association agreed to license the Eurobachelor Label to the Società Chimica Italiana. Thus we now have three partners: the others are the accreditation agency ASIIN in Germany and the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK and Ireland. Talks will soon get under way to see if we can set up a fourth agreement, this time with a Polish partner.

 

The Euromaster project, which has been running since April, will continue until March 31^st 2008. The first application is being processed, and we know of others which are underway. We have to make sure that we can process applications by the project deadline, so that the Label Committee has taken an important decision:

 

Applications under the Euromaster pilot project must be submitted by November 30^th 2007!!

 

This may seem early, but we know that the run-up to Christmas is full of activities which make application-writing difficult.

 

If your institution plans an application, but sees problems with the deadline, please let me know as early as possible so that we can see if we can make special arrangements!

 

All the details can be found on our website www.eurobachelor.eu, including the fees. The “best deal” is to make a joint Eurobachelor/Euromaster application (if your institution does not yet have the Eurobachelor Label).

Contact us at: 

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Tests ... and Testing Centres

Biological Chemistry 3: The group of Arne van der Gen is working hard to arrange, polish and correctly categorized a large selection of questions to be integrated into specialized libraries for a future test available in EChemTest.

 

Testing centres: several actions are in preparation in our first pilot group of testing centres. News ...

• Lyon FR: testing all incoming students, joining the Engineering cycle at CPE Lyon; planning sessions in English

• Helsinki FI: large scale session with freshmen chemists in Finnish

• Perugia IT: a dedicated room was prepared to host sessions

• Reading UK: student assessment session in English

Annual Conference in San Sebastian: EChemTest will organize several sessions from general communication to dedicated technical workshops with IT Experts.

 

User guide: Valentina Piermarini achieved the first draft version of the User Guide dedicated to the candidate "end-user" and the testing centre administrator. Thanks for the work done.

 

Free English demo tests online: thanks to all visitors who tried our tests, and left comments and/or filled the survey, but the standard behaviour while facing an online survey is again verified ... few people wants to take time to fill it, or do not want to leave data behind them - we may understand their point of view, but I would like to thank again the others. Figures are given as there are, assuming that, even not complete, it likely represent the average "visitors" population and that data are usable in good faith.

• The number of hits in ... with the highest score achieved in minutes
    General Chem.1: hits 40.3% / score 98.6% in 16 minutes
    General Chem.2: hits 13.4% / score 92.7% in 20 minutes
    Analytical Chem.3: hits 14.4% / score 35% in 17 minutes
    Inorganic Chem.3: hits 8.3% / score 63% in 21 minutes
    Organic Chem.3: hits 16% / score 66% in 19 minutes
    Physical Chem.3: hits 7.4% / score 44% in 30 minutes

• 13% of the visitors left an email

• 21% of the visitors left an indication on their home country and/or their native language
    11% are non European Countries (Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto-Rico, Sri-Lanka, USA)
    89% are European Countries (Italy 15%)

• 20% of the visitors left a gender indication: the ratio male/female is 60/40.
  the class of ages shows that young people (20-24) and senior (40 and over) are those contributing the most,
  over 50' the male/female ratio increases up to 72/28.

• 23% of the visitors indicates their last degree: 85% of those have a Chemistry background, the other are coming from Biology, Physics, ...

echemtest.net: few figures about the Internet traffic with 25,119 pages views and 12,028 visits from April 2006 to December 2006. The number one country in each geographical area are:

• World 12,028 visits: Europe 44.1%

• Europe 5,395 visits: Finland 22.4%

• South-America 5,048 visits: Brazil 55.2%

• North-America 1.124 visits: Mexico 52.8%; California is leading in the US, and Quebec in Canada

• Africa 224 visits: Morocco 34.4%

• Asia 168 visits: India 25%

• Oceania 11 visits: Australia 81.8%

From Xiti statistics the most used environment is:

• MS Internet Explorer family 83.4%; Firefox / Mozilla family 13.6%; Netscape family 1.2%; Safari 0.8%; others (Opera, Camino) 0.9%;

• Windows family 96.3% (Win XP 82,2%); Linux 1.7%; Mac OS family 1.2%; others 0.6%

• Google is representing 95.5% of the search engines.

  Wants to evaluate your classroom with our tests ? ask for the trial session ...

  Just try it ... here in English! or ask for your free demo-access in other available languages ...

Contact us at: 
 

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 Newly Appointed University Teacher's Staff - Summer School 2007

Received from: Paul Yates, Keele UK (E.U.) - February 8, 2007

Preparations for the Second Summer School for Newly Appointed University Chemistry Teachers are proceeding well. This will take place in Malta from 12th to 16th June 2007, and the closing date for applications to be guaranteed consideration is 30th March. Several applications have already been received, so please encourage any eligible colleagues to apply before the deadline. Full details are available at

 

http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/aa/sdt/naucts2/index.html

 

The working group would also be interested to receive offers of workshop contributions to the programme from non native English speakers.

 

Download the Brochure (Acrobat PDF / 240 Kb).
Email the author:

 Image of Chemistry

Received from: Michele Antonio Floriano, Palermo IT (E.U.) - February 9, 2007

In spite of the rather limited information on its activities supplied in the past few months, the group is alive and well! Two major events are currently being planned:

• Plenary session on “Image of Chemistry” at the San Sebastian ECTN meeting

• ECTN co-sponsored workshop on “Public perception of Chemistry” in Session 10 “Advances in Chemical Education” at the 41^st IUPAC World Chemistry Congress to be held in Turin, Italy, 5 – 11 August 2007 (see www.iupac2007.org)

It would be extremely helpful to collect ideas and contributions for the San Sebastian meeting. The tentative plan is to have a series of short (10’) presentations on effective activities and actions being carried out in different countries.

Anyone wishing to submit contributions on the above, ideas for future group activities or simply confirm membership in the group is kindly requested to send an email message containing full name, affiliation and address to:

Prof. Michele Antonio Floriano
Dipt. Chimica Fisica, Università di Palermo, Italy

Email the author:

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 ECTNA Communication: Website traffic and the NewsLetter

Pascal Mimero, Lyon FR (E.U.)

Websites Traffic: From march 2005 we use the analysis tool provided by Xiti (www.xiti.com) to visualize the evolution of the Internet traffic. The original ectn.net site was re-structured in 3 independant sections ectn-assoc.org, eurobachelor.eu, echemtest.net. The main figures are shown in the table below.

With roughly 56,300 pages views and 22,858 visits in 2006 compared to 2005, we doubled the traffic. An average of 80% (ectn-assoc.org) to 90% (eurobachelor.eu) of the hits are identified from European Countries, except for echemtest.net where 44.1% are of European origins and 42.8% are from South-America (Brazil is the number one source with half of the hits).

The NewsLetter is now (January 25th, 2007) disseminated in:

• 55 countries :        (Europe  32 / RoW  23) = 58% / 42%
• 378 institutions :    (Europe 285 / RoW  93) = 75% / 25%
• 699 subscribers :   (Europe 597 / RoW 102) = 85% / 15%

Thanks to the President of the Italian Chemical Society (SCI), the NewsLetter is now forwarded to all SCI members. The same is under consideration with other representative of national chemical societies and members of the ECTN/ECTN Association.

Email the author:

 The Bologna Process for the Practice-Oriented HE Sector in Chemistry - from seed corn a harvest may be reaped

Received from: Ray Wallace, Nottingham UK (E.U.) - January 24, 2007

At the ECTN Annual Conference in Thessaloniki in May 2005 a group convened to discuss what might be achieved in this area.  Unfortunately the initial enthusiasm of the group did not translate into an ongoing and sustainable action plan and so a small subset of the original participants met for a brainstorming session near Frankfurt in February 2006 to put together a concrete written proposal for a project, which might find funding and so be more sustainable in the medium term.  This is how CITIES was born. 

CITIES – Chemistry and Industry for Teachers in European Schools is now a successfully funded Comenius Project in which the ECTN is a full and active participant.  CITIES came into being on the 1^st October 2006 and is due to end on the 30^th September 2009.  It held its first meeting in Johannisberg im Rheingau, cradle of the famous Riesling wines, on the 12^th & 13^th January 2007.  The ECTN is represented at many levels in CITIES and many of the members of consortium will be familiar to those of you who attend the ECTN annual conferences.  The project will have a total budget of a quarter of a million Euros over 3 years in ‘real money’. 

So what will CITIES do?  Put simply it aims to develop course modules which can be used by teachers in European schools to inform their pupils in a positive and exciting way about what chemistry can achieve for them and society at large.  The modules to be developed are not only seen as conduits of information but also as a means to change attitudes in a positive sense towards chemistry and to increase the awareness of teachers of how chemical knowledge is applied. The emphasis will be on how industry utilises chemistry to produce the goods, services and products that modern society needs.  Additionally as a subsidiary goal the project seeks to inform teachers how Europe has developed and is developing in the context of chemistry, education and training. At this stage it is envisaged that there will be five modules (not all of equal length).  Proposed titles set out in the original submission were:

• Framework Europe
• Chemistry Changes Everything
• Commerce and Innovation – our future
• Chemistry – bringing it alive
• Europe – the education and training arena

Initial discussions in Johannisberg see the third and fourth modules above being the source of major teaching content with the others providing informed sources of information for teachers.  To be able to encompass such a wide remit the consortium was carefully put together to include academe, employers, unions, professional bodies and national chemical societies.

However it is not sufficient simply to produce modules without testing and refining them in the light of experience and this will be carried out during the lifetime of the project using target groups, for example teachers in vocational secondary schools and grammar schools.  Initially modules will be produced in English but subsequently some material will be translated into German, Polish, Czech, and Spanish.  It is hoped additionally to translate a small amount of material into Estonian, Portuguese and Turkish.

Principal members of the consortium are:

• Europa Fachhochschule Fresenius (DE) (Contractor & Co-ordinator)
• European Chemistry Employers’ Group ECEG (BE)
• European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Federation EMCEF (BE)
• Czech Chemical Society (CZ)
• Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (DE)
• Insitut Químic de Sarriá (ES)
• Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität (DE)
• Nottingham Trent University (UK)
• Royal Society of Chemistry (UK)
• Uniwersytet Jagiellonski (PL)

Watch this space for updates as the project develops.

Email the author:

  Residential Summer School NAUCTS II - Sliema MT, June 12-16, 2007

Received from: Paul Yates, Keele UK (EU), December 8, 2006

The second residential summer school for Newly Appointed University Chemistry Teaching Staff will take place in Sliema, Malta from 12th  to 16th June 2007. For full details please see the web pages which  can be accessed from here, by clicking on "Summer School 2007" and from which a brochure can  be downloaded in PDF format. Please circulate details of this event  as widely as possible within your institution, and in particular to staff for whom it is most relevant. Please note that all applications received before 30th March will be considered.

Contributions to the summer school are still welcome, particularly  from those whose first language is not English. Please contact Paul  Yates if you would like to discuss this.

--
Paul Yates
Centre for Professional Staff Development
Hornbeam Building
Keele University
Keele Staffordshire
ST5 5BG
United Kingdom

E-mail:
Telephone: +44 1782 583044
Fax: +44 1782 583518

INTED 2007 International Technology, Education and Development Conference, Valencia ES, March 7-9, 2007