The PENELOPE project builds on the hypothesis that there was a significant but tacit contribution of textile technology involved in the advent of science in ancient Greece. Bruno Latour recently claimed that technologies require an original mode of existence that accounts for their particular form of detour. I agree and propose the technological labyrinth of threads in weaving as a paradigm for this mode. In contrast to the well-known but insufficient idea of hylemorphism (a form/idea applied to material) I suggest the concept of penemorphism (a co-existence of shifting and un-shifting threads, "pene" in Greek) that enables to describe the integration of various levels and elements that are included in each and every technology, especially the digital ones. I focus in theory and practice on the technological principles of ancient weaving. In archaic Greece, we find a veridiction, a very particular way of telling the truth in weaving terms that is hidden behind the relations of metaphor and concept or mythos and logos. I detect this veridiction in all sorts of ancient texts, be they philosophical, poetical, mythographic, cosmological, or mathematical. Ancient weaving contains framing features that are lost in modern clothing technology but were decisive for their use as a model of cosmic order. For this investigation I set up a PENELOPEan laboratory where I 1. Detect the models and topologies of weaves (ancient and modern) 2. Develop codes to make them virtually explorable, and 3. Compare different types of coding and their scope with regard to their dependence on specific systems. The laboratory work is accompanied by a comparative investigation of archaic Greek texts, a selective investigation of scientific theories that employ concepts analogous to my weaving paradigm, and an anthropological investigation of the relation of codes, notations and conditions for the development of notation systems.

ENHANCE (Environmental Humanities for a Concerned Europe) will provide the first fully coordinated training programme for Environmental Humanities in Europe. It will train twelve early-stage researchers, joining three leading universities for environmental research––the University of Leeds, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm––with Europe's largest science and technology museum, the Deutsches Museum, and a further five Associated Partners from the private and third sectors. ENHANCE aims to provide ESRs with the skills training to be at the forefront of a new generation of Environmental Humanities research, and to be employable in a range of careers including environmental consultancy, risk assessment, research and development, green business management, media and communications, and not-for-profit work (environmental and wildlife NGOs). Research and training will concentrate on three major research areas––natural disasters and cultures of risk, history of science and technology, and environmental ethics––and will address a series of core interlocking issues: wilderness and conservation; flooding and drought; waste, environmental justice, and environmental health. ENHANCE offers a unique framework for bridging the arts and the sciences by training ESRs to integrate cutting-edge research across a range of Environmental Humanities subjects––from science and technology studies to history, literature, geography, and anthropology––with policy-oriented actions and cross-sector concerns. The training programme will offer ethical insights into contemporary environmental problems by addressing how these have occurred at different historical moments and across different cultures; how they have been represented in art, literature, film, historical archives, and the media; and how we might imagine and implement alternative environmental practices in a technologically empowered but ecologically endangered world.

"In the first phase of the corona pandemic, barriers to education affected nearly 1.5 billion young people worldwide. Even if schools are cautiously reopened, education is no longer possible in the familiar form. Particularly in the limited time span of vocational training, a quick, systematic, and professional approach is important to ensure the quality of training and to keep the chances of the students for their career entries alive.The pandemic has clearly shown the lack of digital structures in our school systems, both on a technical level and on a content-related-didactic level. Accordingly, there is a need to build capacities for online and hybrid learning, for high-quality content and, generally to further develop the skills of students and teachers for remote learning and teaching. New, innovative teaching formats that can be used in various scenarios - virtual, hybrid, or on-site - are therefore essential. The main objective of the project is to improve the digital skills of teachers and students and to provide teachers in vocational education with free resources so that they can react flexibly, with innovative approaches and high-quality concepts in various corona-related scenarios.Practical work is part of general school practice in vocational schools and essential for learning technical, IT, and scientific methods. However, due to Covid-19 measures, a lot of this has now become simply impossible. This is exactly where our project comes in: We want to enable vocational training teachers to carry out classic hands-on student experiments with virtual support in flexible locations - at home, in several locations at the same time, or with appropriate distance in a classroom - depending on the current (hygenic/security) requirements. A second challenge of the pandemic situation is the isolation of people, thus a lack of a 'school community'. By linking experiments as well as students, a shared experimental situation is created that awakens motivation and interest and promotes cohesion - both locally and in Europe. In the search for answers to the Covid-19 crisis, all sides benefit from European cooperation. The project partners cover the full range of expertise needed (hands-on experiments: DM, Copernicus; didactic: TUM, UL; online learning: UL) and will work closely and strategically together to quickly find tailor-made and transnationally applicable solutions. All partners have solid connections to schools and teachers in their respective countries, allowing direct feedback and effective dissemination. The resulting action-oriented concepts should be exemplary for other EU countries. Teachers from vocational schools are the main target group of the project. Through didactically based further training, we comprehensively promote their digital competencies. With having trained around 40-60 professionals at schools in each country, a first spread of the developed resources is ensured. Each country will develop a teaching concept for a different subject resp. a different vocational training. A compact analysis will assess the actual demands of schools and teachers to define the key features of the program. Teachers themselves will be involved as co-creators of resources. Implementation support will not only ease the uptake through the teachers but at the same time allows a continuous quality enhancement of the teaching modules. To enhance the sustainability of the intellectual outputs, the teaching modules will be accompanied by step-by-step instructions that enable independent implementation of the concepts. A standalone guidebook will instruct teachers, who were inspired by the project to develop their own concepts and supply the required framework for developing new units. At the end of the project, we will have at least three tried-and-tested teaching modules on different topics, each in four languages (DE, PL, PT, EN), that allow easy, direct integration into teaching.The dissemination plan is adapted to the current pandemic situation, running multiple smaller events, as well as using participants as co-multipliers. The events will give an overview of the training and an insight into the practical work. With the help of the guidebook, the developmental system established in the project will be made transparent and re-usable for participants. The desired impact is to provide schools, teachers, and ultimately students with high-quality learning opportunities even in pandemic situations. For teachers, the aspired effects are to further enhance their digital competencies, their self-confidence in handling digital technologies, and their self-image as learning guides for their students. For students, the aimed-at effect is a differentiation that enables them to learn according to their needs - with the focus on vocational students especially strengthening practical work. By doing so and fostering the schools' ""community feeling"", we also wish to promote joyful learning processes."

"The inclusion of people with social disadvantages, e.g. senior citizens, immigrants, ethnic and cultural minorities, or people with lower levels of education, is a hotly debated topic, in society as well as politics. Education is a key issue of inclusion, since it is one of the most relevant factors of successful integration. Museums and Science Centres are pioneers in lifelong learning, and as such - next to schools - highly relevant places for inclusive education. Explainers/Facilitators in Museums and Science Centres play a key role in connecting the topics of exhibitions with visitors, i.e. they are on the edge of communicating to inclusive visitors.The objective of the ITEMS project is to develop, test and promote a training programme for explainers in museums and science centres that enables them identify the needs of some of these groups and to properly address them in their daily educational work. The challenge for explainers is that the range of needs is vast, as are the possibilities to react to these and thus support the visitor. The project aims to develop strategies to open the content and activities for these groups with special needs, including the use of digital media to facilitate better communication and interaction. A modular design of the programmes will enable the partners to integrate the training into the established structures in use at the different locations.For the development of the training module, a number of different strategies will be applied. It will build on best practices already available at the partners, supported by research on the abilities and needs of the respective target groups. In the whole process professionals, such as researchers or specially trained psychologists, will be included. The evaluation will help identify and correct for weaknesses in the programme, thus significantly improving the final product. By gaining active insights and using lots of practical examples during the training, explainers will not only get hands-on solutions to start with, but also the theoretical background to further develop measures and themselves in the future. Last, but not least, for the framework of the training programme the ITEMS project will build on the tried-and-tested professional development programme for explainers originating from the EU project PILOTS.During the project, the participants of the programme - explainers - will significantly enlarge their competences to work with people with special needs visiting a museum or science centre. The over 60 participants at the partner institutions will be from various backgrounds, a gender balance is aimed at. Through the dissemination training more than 100 multipliers (""explainer trainers"") from all over Europe will be directly reached. To make the results available to an even larger community, the training module as well as a guidebook collecting strategies and best practice examples will be published online. This enables further museums and Science Centres to take up and improve their own programmes. Further, contributions to conferences, newsletters as well as journals will further spread the material throughout Europe.Overall, the education of the explainers will enable inclusive activities for disadvantaged people, such as senior citizens or immigrants/refugees, to be consistently run at museums and science centres. For the participating organisations as well as those museums / science centres reached through the dissemination activities, the ITEMS project will not only enable a systematic approach to improving their offers to special visitor groups, but also lead to a more inclusive and open museum / science centre environment in general."

“Tinkering: Contemporary Education for the Innovators of tomorrow” emerged from the need for citizens able to respond to the contemporary global challenges by being competent in science and technology, self-confident and critical thinkers, socially-engaged, with innovative and entrepreneurial attitude. It responded to these needs through a learner-centred approach aiming at education in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and at the development of the 21st century skills. The specific learner-centred approach is Tinkering adopted in a series of activities and tools and disseminated at European level.‘Tinkering’ is the term used to define an innovative pedagogy that reflects the current trends in education and the Maker culture. It promotes individuals’ active engagement with science- and making-oriented activities as ways to relate with, and understand of, the surrounding world. It promotes skills that can be used in different contexts and become useful for a lifetime. Tinkering, as both pedagogy and activities, was initially developed by the Exploratorium of San Francisco, and today is gaining ground internationally.The objectives of the project were to:¥enrich skills with specific reference to STEM¥develop the 21st century (transversal) skills: creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship¥promote a learner-centred pedagogical approach¥improve the attractivity of, attainment in, and lifelong relationship with, science and technology for adults and students¥implement the innovative pedagogy of Tinkering in school and out-of-school contexts at European level and create a Europe-wide community of practice of institutions¥encourage cooperation and exchange of expertise and practice between formal and informal learning institutions and professionals.The main activities developed by the project were:¥Design of new Tinkering activities for adult learners and for schools¥Definition of a methodological framework for Tinkering as a founding element of the work¥Developemnt of pedagogical materials focusing on the methodology of Tinkering and on professional development, aiming to help pactitioners adopt Tinkering in their practice ¥Organization of training for adult and school educators, aimed at creating the conditions for the implementation of the pedagogy and the activities¥Organisation of multiplier events for the wide implementation of the activities¥Dissemination at local, national and European level¥Management and monitoring of cooperation and operations.The project was carried out through cooperation between formal and informal learning institutions and addressed adult and school learners as well as adult and school educators. Partners worked on the different activities on the basis of a plan consisting of phases of development, pilot testing, evaluation and fine-tuning in order to come up with outputs that are both sustainable and transferable. Results¥New Tinkering activities for adult learners and schools designed, fully described and available online¥Sustainable and transferable pedagogical materials focusing on the methodological framework for Tinkering and on guidelines for professional development of educators adopting Tinkering available online¥Training events for adult and school educators, including a training workshop by the Exploratorium¥Multiplier events for the wide implementation of the activities¥Website containing all resources, which remains active after the end of the project¥A European community of practice working with this pedagogy.The project reached 27.213 individuals through the multiplier events and about 450 professionals with the training and also achieved:¥Enriched educational practice in school and out-of-school environments¥Improvement of the facilitation role for educators involved in STEM-oriented experience in formal and informal education¥Increasing consideration of the innovative pedagogy of Tinkering at policy level for curriculum and lifelong education¥Better understanding of the conditions fostering the involvement and motivation of early school leavers¥A reinforcement of skills relating to the job market¥The sensibilization of directly-interested target groups and stakeholders at local, national and European level.The structure of the project encouraged the creation of networks with institutions and individuals at local level, who benefited by the activities and resources. These participated to the events and programmes but their involvement goes beyond the specific participation. They were able to understand the potential of Tinkering in different contexts, therefore we saw an increasing interest to find out more about how Tinkering can be adopted in a range of contexts. At European level, there is a concrete interest of several science museums to be trained in Tinkering in order to adopt the approach and activities in their practice.