Abstract: Technological progress has allowed the emergence of new approaches to teaching. The virtual instruments development has led to lessons based on virtual experiments – applications that simulates real-life phenomenon and are specially designed for students use. Many virtual experiments can be obtained free of charge from the Internet, but their use in the classroom involves more than these tools availability. It involves the use of new teaching techniques and training materials. Through a European project, hundreds of teachers of sciences were trained to develop and implement virtual experiments in the classroom. This paper presents some of the expectations of teachers before the start of the training course and their opinion after the class implementation.

Abstract: The paper emphasizes the principal steps developed for setting up of a web educational video-clips exhibition, composed by 50 representative video-experiments related to the implementation of the virtual experiments in Sciences education, as this was done in the frame of the Socrates-Comenius 2.1. European project: “VccSSe – Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education”. The Exhibition represents a web interface that contains the best virtual experiments produced by the in-service teachers who finalized the Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education training modules, carried out as a main output of the mentioned project. Beside the educational video-clips, other 9 on-line / remote simulating laboratories (produced by the project partnership) allow teachers and students to work directly inside the experiment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Since the beginning of the 21st Century, massive changes took place in the field of education. New teaching and learning methods based on using modern ICT tools – like virtual experiments, educational video-clips or other multimedia products – have been implemented in the educational process. The paper presents an analysis of the impact produced by the implementation of new virtual experiments designed by 146 teachers who participated to a 40 hours training modules “Virtual Instrumentation in Science Education” organized in the frame of Socrates-Comenius 2.1. European project “VccSSe – Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education”. Different aspects and interpretation related to the challenges and difficulties encountered during the implementation process are also included. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: The paper presents some aspects emphasized in the “Best Practices Guideline for Educational Use of ICT Tools”, realized as a main product of the Comenius 2.1 European project “FISTE – A Future Way for In-Service Teacher Training Across Europe”. The main aim of this guideline was to collect all the experiences gathered during the project, regarding the ICT tools explored and inserted in the on-line course “Integrating ICT in Traditional Training”, organized in the frame of the project. The best practices guideline was designed to reflect on the experiences of individual project partners in delivering of the mentioned on-line course. It extracted some conclusions regarding the effective educational use of ICT tools in traditional educational settings, from both pedagogical and technical point of view, and is edited as a web product accessible to European educators.

Abstract: This paper presents some essential considerations referred to the constructions performed by European teachers in terms of virtual experiments and lesson plans within the framework of a Virtual community collaborative Space for Sciences education. This framework was set up in the context of the Socrates Comenius 2.1 European project: “VccSSe – Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education”. In this project, teachers from five European countries (Romania, Poland, Finland, Spain and Greece) participated in blended learning courses aiming their training for the use of Information and Communication Technologies in real teaching and learning practices. Within this framework, on-line training materials and virtual experiments were created and developed. After the end of the designed courses, teachers were asked to form their own virtual experiments and lesson plans and then to implement their products in the classrooms. The analysis of the data shows that teachers who participated in the VccSSe Project encouraged by the aforementioned blended course, expressed a favourable feedback related to the implementation of their own virtual experiments in the teaching activities.

Abstract: The user-interface represents one very important aspect in the use of the information systems. The usability and acceptability of an information system, to a great extend, depend on the user-interface quality. The computer technology advances have changed the role of the end-user. The end-user development has become the most commonly used form of programming. It includes customization, integration and extension activities which may lead to a significant alteration of the system and may raise serious issues concerning correctness and consistency, security, and privacy. This paper presents and discusses the results of a survey meant to identify the users' awareness on the information systems usability, when users are viewed as developers.

Abstract: It is commonly accepted that universities are an important source of new knowledge, especially in the science and technology sector. The mechanisms to transfer this new knowledge from academia to business organizations are widely discussed by many authors. This paper presents how web collaboration environments may help in distance knowledge transfer and also a web conferencing example meant to stress the factors which led to a successful web meeting for knowledge diffusion. There is presented also the positive feedback of the attendees, in the conditions of low participation rate in previous similar experiences.

Abstract: Within European projects, the knowledge dissemination represents a very important activity claimed by the European frameworks. Beside the traditional dissemination methods, there are used specific technologies for knowledge dissemination which range from the classical telephone to ICT technologies. The paper aims to identify if web conferencing can be successfully used for educational projects outcomes dissemination and what are the factors that may lead to its success or its failure. The paper presents the experience of a dissemination videoconference organized in the frame of the European project “VccSSe – Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education”. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.