Final Report Summary - ECFUN (European Children's Future University Network - www.universiYOU.net)
The 'European children's future university network' (ECFUN) aimed to set up a virtual platform by bringing together local science communication activities and experiences of European universities and foundations that try to attract children's and young people's interest in science. The aim was to provide didactically outstanding scientific content for children deriving from underrepresented groups and establish a future network - both in cyberspace and real life. The virtual platform provided the opportunity for children to learn more about what the scientific world is based upon.
A range of constitutive and complementary activities were performed to achieve this aim:
- Provisions of necessary pre-requisites for the project
- Graphic design and ICT-development
- Production of content sets and maintenance of the webportal
- Quality assurance
- Dissemination and networking.
The project was structured into the following work packages (WPs):
- WP1: Coordination / management board
- WP2: Kick off (integrative WP)
- WP3: Structure development (integrative WP)
- WP4: ICT-development, graphic design and support (specific WP)
- WP5: Content collection and adaptation (integrative WP)
- WP6: Quality assurance (specific WP)
- WP7: Dissemination and networking (integrative WP)
- WP 8: Maintenance and compilation of the webpage.
The core element and main result of the ECFUN project was the web portal http://www.ecfun.eu which comprises 69 content sets (scientific lectures and articles) taken from 10 scientific main areas, which come along with individual biographies of involved scientists, which outline their personal interests and careers - and thus are capable for acting as role models. Graphic- and web-design was developed and implemented by means of a multilingual CMS including modelling tools, editing features and usage statistics as well as a standardized interface for publishing mechanisms, caching mechanisms and search engines. 69 content sets (lectures and biographies) were collected and adapted, translation of content into all respective languages. Local activities were organised to involve children and to build up real networks in order to use the virtual network. An international two days conference for more than 150 experts in science communication was the highlight of the dissemination and networking strategy. There have been no substantial deviations from the work programme, even though it became evident that the process of content collection is rather challenging. All in all, the effort for collecting all the content for the website, preparing it for online publication, translating it and keeping the entire website up-to-date in all languages was enormous.
A range of constitutive and complementary activities were performed to achieve this aim:
- Provisions of necessary pre-requisites for the project
- Graphic design and ICT-development
- Production of content sets and maintenance of the webportal
- Quality assurance
- Dissemination and networking.
The project was structured into the following work packages (WPs):
- WP1: Coordination / management board
- WP2: Kick off (integrative WP)
- WP3: Structure development (integrative WP)
- WP4: ICT-development, graphic design and support (specific WP)
- WP5: Content collection and adaptation (integrative WP)
- WP6: Quality assurance (specific WP)
- WP7: Dissemination and networking (integrative WP)
- WP 8: Maintenance and compilation of the webpage.
The core element and main result of the ECFUN project was the web portal http://www.ecfun.eu which comprises 69 content sets (scientific lectures and articles) taken from 10 scientific main areas, which come along with individual biographies of involved scientists, which outline their personal interests and careers - and thus are capable for acting as role models. Graphic- and web-design was developed and implemented by means of a multilingual CMS including modelling tools, editing features and usage statistics as well as a standardized interface for publishing mechanisms, caching mechanisms and search engines. 69 content sets (lectures and biographies) were collected and adapted, translation of content into all respective languages. Local activities were organised to involve children and to build up real networks in order to use the virtual network. An international two days conference for more than 150 experts in science communication was the highlight of the dissemination and networking strategy. There have been no substantial deviations from the work programme, even though it became evident that the process of content collection is rather challenging. All in all, the effort for collecting all the content for the website, preparing it for online publication, translating it and keeping the entire website up-to-date in all languages was enormous.
