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NEWS IN THE WEB AND IN THE WORLD

Pilots HUB: 322 members! Join at the Pilots website!

The 1st of November 2008 Pilots was born, a Gruntvig project dedicated to produce training schemes and materials for the explainers. Partners of the project are: Ecsite (project leader), Technopolis (BE), Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (FR), Fondazione Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologica “Leonardo da Vinci” (IT), SISSA Medialab (IT), Ciência Viva (PT), Ustanova Hisa eksperimentov (SLO).

Two training courses for explainers were held in Mechelen (April 2009) and Milano (June 2009): all the materials are in PILOTS Hub, the Webplatfrom of the explainers' international community, where 322 explainers from all around the world already gathered:

New materials online

Sara Hossein, THE group national connector from Austria, sent us the report of an interesting seminar on different philosophies and experiences for explainers role and job, held in Wien by the Science Center Netzwerk the 16th of March.
Here you can find the document.
Thanks Sara!

MILANO 2009 - THE group and Pilots at the Ecsite conference

Two meetings dedicated to museum explainers were held during 2009 Ecsite conference, Milano 4-6 June: 1. a pre-conference, with workshops, presentations and discussions on explainers roles and training needs, orgnaized in collaboration with the Pilots project (the materials are published in the Pilots Hub).; 2. a poster session, focused on: "How to tackle diversities". Soon the materials will be published on that website.

THE GROUP - Rationale and contacts

The organization and the structuring of THE group will be updated. An open debate will frame clear questions on the necessity of defining the profession of explainers and on how to evaluate the position of explainers in the organizational structure of a science centre. Open discussion on three focused issues:

1. Practical organization of THE group
2. Definition of the professional status
3. The explainers within the science centre organizational structure

THE pre-conference, Budapest 2008. Topological exercise.
Credits: Michael Creek

Within the ECSITE annual conferences he different roles and the training of explainers (educators, facilitators, demonstrators, pilots, guides…) in science centres have become a hot topic. There is a growing interest in valuing the role and professional status of explainers, including more direct involvement in a museum's programmes, exhibit development and new formats for a better science and society dialogue.

For that reason THE group was born (Thematic Human Interface and Explainers group): the first ECSITE thematic group dedicated to investigate the explainers roles and training practices, with the aim to build a learning community for explainers.

THE steering committee: Antonio Gomes da Costa (Ciencia Viva, Lisbon), Sally Duensing (King’s College, London), Miha Kos (The House of Experiments, Lubiana), Matteo Merzagora (ICS, SISSA, Trieste), Paola Rodari (Sissa Medialab, Trieste) and Maria Xanthoudaki.

For more information: THEinfo@medialab.sissa.it

Register and contribute to the construction of the webcommunity, adding new documents and comments. If you have any doubts, write to THEinfo@medialab.sissa.it

THE Group