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LearningLAB |
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Athens, 26-28 June 2006 |
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Cutting-edge technologies in Biosciences
Programme
Photos
The "history"
Everything started in September 2004 when
ELLS received a phone call from Dr. Haralabia Boleti.
Haralabia explained that she had been a
PhD student and postdoctoral fellow at EMBL Heidelberg.
Since then, Haralabia had returned home to
Greece, where she had been working in the Department
of Microbiology at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute
in Athens. In parallel to her scientific activities,
Haralabia had organised several training courses
for scientists, and high-school students' visits
to the Pasteur Institute. She had heard about
ELLS' initiatives and had become interested
in organising workshops aimed at high-school teachers,
similar to ELLS' LearningLABs, in Greece.
When Haralabia attended a scientific conference
in Heidelberg in October 2004, she came and visited ELLS
to discuss the organisation of a course
for high-school teachers in Athens. ELLS introduced
Haralabia to Anastasios Koutsos, a Greek EMBL
PhD student, who had been an extremely active contributor
to ELLS activities. We also provided the
contact of Dr. Despoina Sanoudo, a Greek scientist
working at the Foundation for Biomedical Research,
at the Academy of Athens and contacts of Greek
teachers who had attended ELLS LearningLABs.
In September 2005, ELLS Education Officer Alexandra
Manaia and Anastasios Koutsos traveled to Athens
to participate in the Science on Stage National
Festival and took this opportunity to visit the
Pasteur Institute and start planning the programme
of the future teachers' workshop: themes, dates
potential contributors, etc. They met with Haralabia
and Dr. Sylva Haralambous, who is Director
of the Transgenic Technology Unit. Sylva teaches
at the university and has a strong interest
in science education.
Meanwhile, Haralabia and Sylva participated in the writing of a proposal for a project called "OPEN DOORS" comprising several educational activities to be funded by the Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology. The application for this project was successful and Haralabia and Sylva also received strong support from the Hellenic Pasteur Institute. The funding enabled the organisation of three workshops for teachers in 2006/2007.
The first teachers workshop in Athens
The first workshop, "Cutting-edge technologies
in biosciences" took place at the Pasteur
Institute on
26-28 June 2006.
The opening session included an official welcome
address from Dr. H. Dotsika, co-ordinator of the
"Open Doors Programme", and from the
organisers Haralabia Boleti and Sylva Haralambous.
Alexandra Manaia gave an overview of ELLS' activities,
followed by a recorded video welcome message from
Prof. Fotis Kafatos. Professor Kafatos was the
EMBL Director General for 12 years [1993-2005]
and played a very important role in the creation
of ELLS at EMBL and has always strongly
supported ELLS activities. Professor Kafatos expressed
that he was particularly pleased that similar
initiatives were taking place in his home country,
in collaboration with the EMBL.
Around 40 teachers, mostly from Athens, but
also from Crete and Tessaloniki, attended
the 3-day workshop. Each day was devoted to a
different topic: the first day focused on the
human genome project and applications in biomedicine, the second day on stem cell
technology and its applications, and the third
day on new and re-emerging pathogens. The scientific talks which took
place in the morning were open to all participants,
and the hands-on sessions in the afternoon were limited
to 16.
The speakers included scientists from the Pasteur
institute and from other Greek institutions such as
the Foundation for Biomedical Research, of the
Academy of Athens, the AlphaLab-Centre for Molecular
Biology and Cytogenetics, the University of Crete-Bioethics
course, the Biomedical Sciences Research Centre
Alexander Fleming and the Greek National Bioethics
Committee.
The participants played the Virtual Microarray
game devised by Anastasios Koutsos, who was pleased
to instruct the activity in Greek for the first
time. Two teams of teachers, lead by Sylva Haralambous
and Dimitra Thomaidou, tested their knowledge
about stem cells, which they had gained during the morning sessions,
by playing the ELLS Stem Cell Game.
The hands-on sessions focused on the isolation
of genomic and plasmidic DNA and on green fluorescent
protein purification using materials and classroom
kits devised by Biorad and NCBE. The teachers
had a look at neural stem cells and observed slides
containing cells infected with different microbes
under the microscope. They also got the chance
to visit the confocal microscopy facility.
Sylva and Haralabia invited several school science textbook
editors to present their products in the exhibition
hall. Teachers benefitted from special discounts.
The excellent Holiday Lectures DVDs, kindly provided
by the HHMI, were distributed to the participants.
The course was a great success! Congratulations
to Haralabia and Sylva, to all the motivated Greek teacher
participants and to all the scientists who contributed!
Layout by: Stefanie Wollenberg |
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