News
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FameLab: Science Communication Finals 2020 Official Statement
The FameLab International Finals are going ahead in Autumn 2020 and will be held online to enable all countries to participate.In partnership with the British Council, the competition brings the brightest young science minds from across the world to culturally share their experiences of science and compete for the title of the world’s best science communicator.
For updates on FameLab activity around the world, please check the British Council's webpage or contact in-country teams directly from their links.
NIDA will continue to share information as it becomes available.
FameLab: Science Communication Finals 2020 Official Statement
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Citizen Science and Open Science
The Citizen Science & Open Science Community of Practice of the Citizen Science Global Partnership (CSGL) recently wrote a paper for UNESCO on ‘Global Citizen Science perspectives on Open Science’, where the views of 63 citizen science practitioners from 24 countries were synthesised responding to UNESCO’s key.The full-text paper is available online and complements the two other projects of the CSGL, Citizen Science for the SDGs and the Global Mosquito Alert Consortium
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Climate Education Toolkit: Summer Edition!
Launched July 2020, the toolkit includes 5 days’ worth of activities to learn about climate and environmental issues, the communities they impact and how to take civic action. Prepared by the Earth Day Network the kit is designed for educators, parents and enthusiastic students (8-18 years). It features:- activities to engage learners in the local impacts of climate change and what it means to be
- an active participant in community civic action.
- daily themes to investigate environmental justice, plastic pollution, biodiversity and more.
- a reading guide to build environmental decision-making skills.
Resources and activities are arranged under broad headings:
- Plastic Pollution
- Biodiversity
- Climate Equity and Environmental Justice
- Air Pollution
- Food Sustainability
Access the toolkit and download relevant material.
More resources available within the Education Resource Library
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Information literacy: From practice to research and back again
Special issue of the IFLA Journal. “Aims to look beyond standards and processes, engaging instead in the potential developing knowledge to guide information literacy practice across disciplines, contexts and environments.”CONTENTS:
Editorial
Information literacy: From practice to research and back again
Gaby Haddow and Min ChouArticles
Knowledge visualization and mapping of information literacy, 1975–2018
Omwoyo Bosire OnyanchaRefining information literacy practice: Examining the foundations of information literacy theory
Michael Flierl and Clarence MaybeeTheory into practice: Challenges and implications for information literacy teaching
Deborah SchachterPlayful learning for information literacy development
Andrew WalshCurating knowledge, creating change: University Knowledge Center, Kosovo national transition
Mary M. Somerville, Anita Mirjamdotter, Edmond Harjizi, Elham Sayyad-Abdi, Michele Gibney,
Christine Bruce and Ian StoodleyAdult learning theories and autoethnography: Informing the practice of information literacy
Karen BordonaroStudying visual literacy: Research methods and the use of visual evidence
Krystyna K. MatusiakIFLA Journal: Volume 46, No. 2 (June 2020) Guest editors: Gaby Haddow and Min Chou
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Environmental Literacy Programme Evaluation: NaDEET. Namibia
The Namib Desert Environmental Education Trust (NaDEET) has developed a series of activities and learning materials for Namibian school children, teachers and adult participants, in order to powerfully demonstrate the imminent necessity of adopting a more sustainable lifestyle.As part of the Environmental Literacy Project, the It's Time to... series has now been available for the past 5 years and aims to promote sustainability to a wide audience by making environmentalism come alive.
The It's Time To Grow: Environmental Learning Pack is designed for teachers to use in pre-primary and junior primary school grades and consists of four activity booklets for school children (sun, water, recycling and animals & Plants), a teacher’s book and four memory games to accompany each of the topics. The materials are currently available in six languages. English, Khoekhoegowab, Oshindonga, Otjiherero, RuKwangali and Silozi.
The impact of the programme in Namibia’s north east regions has been recently evaluated. Several visible environmental practices that participants had learned through workshops were found, including constructions using recycled materials, an energy audit and an additional memory game.
An article describing the monitoring & evaluation appears in the June issue of the NaDeet Newsletter and further information can be obtained from NaDEET Director or Programme Manager through sending an email to admin@nadeet.org
Details of the It's Time to series
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Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P)
The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg), in collaboration with partners SNV and Farm Radio International (FRI), launched a new project “Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P)” for Ethiopia and Kenya on 1 July, with support of the IKEA Foundation.Vegetable consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest of any region in the world. To bridge the ‘vegetable gap’ people need opportunities to produce and market vegetables to generate income and contribute to an accessible, affordable supply of nutritious food.
‘Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P)’ plans to establish 200 vegetable business networks (120 in Kenya, 80 in Ethiopia) to engage an estimated 4000 women and youth in market activities designed to close the ‘vegetable gap’ and improve livelihoods and nutrition.
V4P&P will engage ‘business champions’ to guide the formation of Vegetable Business Networks (VBNs) of women and youth as they pursue collective action in vegetable production and marketing in urban and peri-urban areas. The champions will facilitate their networks’ access to information, training, financial or other services, and input/output markets, and serve as liaisons with local governments.
V4P&P places special emphasis on regenerative agricultural technologies including biochar, compost, green manures, crop rotation and beneficial microbes to nourish the soil and reduce or eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. It will be well positioned to capture rising consumer demand for traditional Africa vegetables.
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FameLab International Finals 2020: Science Communication competition
The Finals of FameLab 2020 have been postponed until October 2020. However, FameLab national events continue to take place with revised dates and/or in digital formats where possible. For the latest situation in each country, please check the national FameLab webpage/social media channelsThe following countries have confirmed their participation in FameLab 2020:
Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Kazakhstan, Korea, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Malaysia, Netherlands, Qatar, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Thailand and UK.
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Citizen science projects to join from home
These are challenging times for everybody around the world. If you are confined at home but would like to participate in citizen science projects, the website EU-Citizen.Science might offer you a new activity that you can join.View the project list and search for a project by title, keyword, country, etc. For example, you can join:
Folding@Home – Coronavirus, connect to researchers around the world working to better understand the 2019 Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and accelerate the open science effort to develop new life-saving therapies. Folding@home is currently based at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine;
Yellowhammer Dialects project, originally limited to the Czech Republic and now in the UK, New Zealand, Poland and Switzerland, to map the global geographic distribution of birdsong dialects of the Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella);
Dark Sky Meter, a project where you can measure artificial light at night (light pollution) with an iPhone app which acts a photometer. You can send the results to light pollution researchers worldwide;
UMAPIT, an urban biodiversity recording app, developed by University of Manchester, that aims to encourage active engagement with wildlife monitoring especially in urban environments and to highlight the wealth of biodiversity in urban areas;
CrowdWater, a hydrological citizen science project developed scientifically by the University of Zurich in which citizen scientists collect hydrological data in the categories water level, temporary streams, soil moisture and plastic pollution, using the CrowdWater | SPOTTERON app.
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Learn STEM Online Conference Innovative STEM education
Learn STEM welcomed 22 international speakers and more than 700 registered school teachers, practitioners and experts from all five continents, and evaluated a huge success!If you could not participate or want to revisit the online conference, you can enjoy the full programme and download all presentations.
You can also watch the whole conference in a video recording (3 hours).
Learn STEM looks forward to continuing their discussion on innovative STEM education together with you!
Further information from Dr Christian M. Stracke, Learn STEM Coordinator through the contact form.
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DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) receives 3-year contribution of funding from FinELib
FinELib, the consortium for Finnish universities, will co-fund DOAJ for a 3-year period based on the SCOSS model*. DOAJ will therefore continue to be independent; funding to the programme being via donations, 22% of which comes from sponsors and 78% from members and publisher members.
All DOAJ services are therefore free of charge, including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available. DOAJ also operates an education and outreach programme across the globe, focussing on improving the quality of applications submitted.
At 26 May 2020, DOAJ includes:
- 14,649 Journals
- 11,659 being searchable at Article level
- from 133 Countries
- giving a total of 4,908,803 Articles
*The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) is a network of influential organisations committed to helping secure OA and OS infrastructure well into the future.