Seminar 6 November  2002 in Oslo:        
"Ciência Viva" - an inspiration for Norway ? 

The seminar presents a Portuguese programme for strengthening scientific and technological subjects in education

Applications for education in scientific and technological subjects are low in many industrialized 
countries. Various measures have been tried, but only a few countries have followed Portugal’s 
example of comprehensive measures to rectify the situation. Since 1996, the Ciência Viva Programme 
has assisted projects that encourage the use of experiments in learning science. It has also involved 
scientific and school communities in order to exchange knowledge and resources. The Ciência Viva 
Forum is held in May each year. Here several thousands of teachers, students and others who have 
an interest in the programme are assembled in the hall which was the centre for Expo98. During two 
days, 500 of the 1000 or so projects in ”Ciência Viva” are presented. At the opening, Portugal's 
President, Prime Minister, Minister of Education and Minister for Technology and Science are all 
present. This gives the arrangement and the programme considerable publicity. Details on the home 
page of the programme: www.ucv.mct.pt/

By giving increased backing to education in scientific and technological subjects, Portugal hopes to 
become one of the leading industrialized countries. NTVA wishes to give a broad presentation of ”Ciência 
Viva” to representatives for education and business in Norway. This will be done by Professor José 
Mariano Gago, who is among the founders of the programme. Professor Gago is a physicist connected to 
CERN, and was until spring 2002 Minister for Technology and Science in Portugal. He will give an 
orientation on the background, content, organization and financing of the programme. In order to contrast 
”Ciência Viva”, we have invited a representative of the Swedish NOT project (Natural science and 
technology), see: www.hsv.se/NOT/, and a representative of the Finnish LUMA-project, see:  
www.edu.fi/projektit/luma/svenska/index.html   

The NOT project will be presented by Laila Backlund. She is Director for Education at the National 
Agency for Education in Stockholm. Since August 2000 she has acted as project manager of the 
project. The LUMA project will be presented by Henrik Laurén.  He is Director for Education at the 
National Agency for Education in Helsinki and a member of the project board. In addition to giving an 
orientation on their respective projects, the two Nordic representatives will also give their evaluation of 
”Ciência Viva” based on experience from their own projects. This will give us a good background to 
judge whether this type of programme is suited to Norwegian conditions or not.