Zorka 2004 – Science Laboratory Project

One of the main aims of the Sulinet Express Program is to help and accelerate the integration of the ICT usage in the teaching and learning process. Sulinet Program Office is organizing a Science Laboratory Project with all the thirty members of the Hungarian Network of the Innovative Schools. The main goal of the project is to elaborate, try and apply some ICT-based collaborative teaching and learning methods for future use in natural science teaching (biology, chemistry, physics, geography, science).

All schools taking part in the Zorka Project was provided with a meteorology station and a data logger package for environmental measurements. The meteorology station can measure temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, light, noise level, precipitation, direction and speed of wind. The data logger set has 5 built-in sensors and 2 external thermometers, a pH measurer, a voltmeter, an Amper meter and two sensors of light. The project coordinators of the Sulinet Program Office help the participating schools with technical and methodological support.

The ZORKA Science Laboratory Project has two branches:

1. Meteorological measurements
   The first task of the 30 schools was to locate and set up the meteorological station. The students and a teacher of geography had to record the data with the help of the software and they had to send the data via e-mail to Sulinet. From the new school year they have to upload the data to the homepage of the project (http://www.sulinet.hu/zorka/sulimet). Between 20th September and 29th October every school will make a weather report of a specific day. The schools should use local meteorological data and other information for the weather report and they send it to the Sulinet Program Office as an audio file. Every visitor of the homepage will be able to listen to the actual weather report. The 30 innovative schools that take part in the project evaluate the meteorological data and they document the measurements and make a preview with photos and videos.
2. Science measurements and experiments
   The schools taking part in the project planned some kind of science experiments and measurements for using the data loggers. There are 15 pairs of schools and each pair designs and carries out four science experiments illustrated with photos and videos. After that phase another school pair gets the documentations of the experiments and they validate the results with. During the project the participants can use some digital teaching materials from the Sulinet Education homepage and from the Sulinet Digital Knowledge Base.
   
   One or two teachers from each school (for example chemistry biology physics etc.) coordinate the student group who are dealing with the measurements and science experiments.

During the project the students and teachers of the schools can communicate with each other using the Sulinet Webboard (http://www.sulinet.hu/webboard).