SELF-DIAGNOSTIC EXERCISE
Yes, my friend, knowledge is the most valuable thing we have. All of us we are learning every day, from our family members, from our friends, from our teachers and even from the lady in the bookstore who talked to her sister about an incident in her life. Sometimes we are learning not even to notice it. But when your purpose in your life is to learn, more and more every day, this is wonderful. You become richer than yesterday, you enlarge your skills and you fully enjoy your life. I think learning could be also a way to survive: you can face a lot of difficult situations. Do not wait for the difficulties to come, be prepared in advance!
Just think how lucky we are to live on this planet now when we can use the internet and not fifty years ago, or even twenty. It helps us to do things much faster, to obtain the information we need or want at any moment. Let me tell you about a course I took on line, several years ago. I am a person with a lot of responsibilities, I have to do a lot of things, and time is always too short for me, as you very well know. That is why when I found the course “General Course on Intellectual Property”, organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2002 as an e-learning delivered course I felt it is an opportunity for me to learn something interesting in a new environment which I did not experienced till that moment and wasting not too much time. I was preparing my lessons during traveling by bus to my laboratory and in the evening I was not spending too much time in front of the computer. The collaboration with the tutor was excellent, always answering to my questions, guiding me all over the course. The distance disappeared and at the end I felt myself as a champion. Do you understand? I was a person in Romania taking a course in the USA without any travel between these two countries.
E-learning was for me an exciting experience in 2002. I was always bearing it in my mind, looking for the moment I could use it as a provider of knowledge. Since I was involved in several educational projects I felt that in the near future I need to use this technology. It can help me to be in many places in the same time by having a lot of trainees all over the country. Our educational projects address the needs of the teachers at the pre-university level as it concerns science teaching by experiment. I am confident that e-learning (term which can cover many technologies) will be very useful in my work).
Experiments mean data. You can teach the student how to do the experiment, how to understand it, but very important is also to teach him to understand the data he obtains, to understand the results of his work. Since 2 years ago data acquisition using computers was not used in school experiments. Recently, by means of the projects we coordinate and the partnerships we have we introduced these tools in the Romanian schools, during the training courses for teachers and demo sessions for students. The concern that this approach induced at science teachers and students gave us the courage to diversify our offer for schools and to involve more participants. Their interest made us to try to promote these methods to the middle and elementary school starting from our experience with high school students and teachers. The reaction of the end-users and their enthusiasm made possible the organization of contests for students and science fairs where students came with their experiments using data acquisition technologies (see our web site at
http://education.inflpr.ro/ section Activities and Events).
Am I a pioneer? I do not know, but I always need to be informed, I always need to have up-to-date information and tools. I am innovative as my profession requires this (I am working in research) but I am a good observer for better understanding people around me and the events as well. I think ageing could be a threshold as I see old people giving up in understanding events and new technologies. I know this cannot happen to me.
I and Dan, my husband (we are a team, working in the same lab) we are the most innovative in our organization as we are the first to establish in Romania, at a research institute, a center to support science education in schools. Besides that, by diversity of its activities we can claim that the center is a European premiere. We love to challenge, to be the first and we are fighting (with the administration, with the mentality, with our country legacy in education) to promote our outreach activities.
Changing the appearance 
