"<< Background >>CONTEXTIn this era of rapid technical advancement, there are growing debates around the idea of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology materials are being utilized in our daily lives in many ways, often without consumer knowledge. This key technology is considered not only a major source of innovation in technology, medicine and other fields, but also one of the main challenges for the 21st century. European universities and high-level vocational training programmes already cover this technology extensively but not schools.The European Commission (EC) has explicitly included nanotechnology as a theme in its research funding programmes over the past decade and supported scientists through the European Research Council (ERC). But while the clear priority of the new funding programmes (Horizon and Erasmus+) is to bridge the gap between research and the market, the central tenant of the European research effort remains excellent science, without which there can be no progress. As known, knowledge is an important parameter of the global economy. Also, countries must support research, development, and new job creation based on innovation. NEEDSHowever, although the word nanotechnology will be familiar to many high-school students, the subject is not widely taught in European schools. Attempting a targeted search on the subject of nanotechnology and schools in the EU, returns only one relevant research publication ""Teaching nanotechnology in primary education, Achilleas Mandrikas, Emily Michailidi, Department of primary education - University of Crete, 02/07/2019"". The conclusions from this research state that teaching NST is worthwhile even in primary education and that moreover, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) provide an appropriate context for the introduction of Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) in science education.In the near future, the level of a country will be the indicator of that country’s economical power and countries that are able to control nanotechnology will control industry, too. Because of this, the need for labour force capable of using nanotechnology and contributing to production increases every day.TARGET GROUPSDuring the project:•Direct: Professionals (teachers) working with children 11-17 year old, Children between the ages of 11 and 17, Schools, Children's associations and organisations, social workers working with children, Policy makers and educational stakeholders deciding about subjects covered by school curricula.•Indirect: Parents, Universities educating teachers Designers & developers of teaching material for kids, Children’s curriculum developers, Computer & Internet trainersAfter the project:•Commercial organisations producing serious games and multimedia curricula for educational purposes.•Universities with pedagogical departments MOTIVATION TO APPLYThe partnership was formed with a view to deliver an educational package which will address the existing gap in EU schools with respect to the integration of NST (NanoScience and Technology) activities to the existing science teaching setting. In the process, educational content for NST for secondary education will be developed for the first time. The content will be complemented by instructional material and guides for educators to be in position to integrate the content in their teaching and generate awareness among school children about the importance of NST for our society. But this is not the major innovation of the project. The most innovative aspect lies at the creation of a dedicated Minecraft World to support a game which delivers NST related challenges which children can accomplish and in the process learn about NST and its connection to science subjects.The creation of this exciting educational offering is major motivation for the partners to apply as it delivers multidimensional benefits in relation to their mission (for the school, association and HE institute) and their commercial aspirations (for the companies)<< Objectives >>OBJECTIVESDue to the explosion of nanotechnology applications, there is a necessity to update school science curricula (secondary education) by integrating nanotechnology-related concepts that are both relevant and meaningful to students. The integration of nanotechnology in school science curricula comes in response to nanoscientific development and the mission of educators to instil and arouse students’ curiosity in learning about both what is and what will be more dominantly occupying the marketplace [Integrating nanotechnology into school education: a review of the literature, Nadira I. Ghattas & Jeffrey S. Carver]The project aims to increase awareness of nanotechnology among European science teachers, especially for the purpose of making the young become aware of developments in nanotechnology, and of the importance of the subject, to make them include nanotechnology within their career plans.Enabling our youth to develop and understanding and engage with nanotechnology at earlier education levels will be an important step to meet the need for labour force in this area. Our main objective in this Project is to enable our youth to meet nanotechnology at school level, and through this initial knowledge, create awareness about its importance for our society. We strongly believe that NANOWARE will help in meeting EU needs within this context. The fundamental output of our Project will raise awareness among teachers and subsequently school children about Nanoscience and nanotechnology and affect their future career plans positively regarding this subject.Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) have been recognized as an emerging technology of the 21st century. The interdisciplinary nature and remarkable applications of NST have prompted science education researchers to recognize its potential in science teaching. NST have also been acknowledged as a vital field in technology in order to understand the socio-scientific issues of innovations as described by the EU framework of Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI). Nanotechnology is fundamentally a European issue with clear EU goals. The project brings together a range of actors who all have a role to play in the achievement of these goals and so collectively can respond from a range of perspectives and circumstances. NANOWARE objective is to increase awareness of nanotechnology among European science teachers of secondary education, especially for the purpose of making the school children become aware of developments in nanotechnology, and of the importance of NST to our society and economy and subsequently to their professional career in the future. Moving nanotechnology-based activities into the school science setting will be a major achievement of NANOWARE and is a huge motivational factor for the partners. Because of NANOWARE, secondary school teachers will be able to integrate NST activities to the teaching of science subjects taking advantage of the interdisciplinary nature and remarkable applications of NST which have prompted science education researchers to recognize its potential in science teaching. Important by-products also emerge from the promotion of Minecraft as a digital learning space for delivering Problem Based Learning experiences to students which enhance key competences and increase knowledge and awareness among subjects which are important for their future.<< Implementation >>The primary objective of this project is to deliver to the school community an educational package comprising a new curriculum for NST targeting secondary education. The NST curriculum will capitalise on new media technologies accompanied by a specialised delivery environment in Minecraft which will support the delivery of NST related educational challenges so as to support the teachers with the integration of NST related to their science teaching setting. To achieve this main objective the project will satisfy a set of intermediate objectives aiming to provide all inclusive NST related resources to professionals working with secondary education children, such as those below:-Design the NANOWARE curriculum based on the research carried out at proposal level and the classification of NST related material based on their suitability for secondary school science related education.-Engage with secondary education teachers to validate the design before deciding upon the final structure, coverage and modules.-Develop the modules accordingly.-Interact with secondary education teachers to identify the prerequisite knowledge of NST related terms and glossary in order to ease the adoption of the Nanoware package by the teachers and schools. -Connect with teachers through focus groups to discuss the kind of support that is needed by the teachers in order to integrate the NST activities to their teaching setting. -Elaborate challenges in Minecraft. Teachers will be presented with the initial challenges in order to provide their feedback and drive the work towards the elaboration of challenges which are meaningful and possible to integrate to their teaching setting. -Implement the NANOWARE Minecraft world, enriched with resource packs and mods and model inside it the NST related challenges, porgram their logic and connect them to a complete mission for school children-Create Instructional material and a guide with the help of the teachers to decide upon the contents of the educators pack in relation to the use and integration of the Nanoware Minecraft World to the teaching setting. -Validate the results with the teachers under real conditions. -Define a skills and achievements framework for non-formal recognition of NST related knowledge (award Badges) of children which successsfully complete the NANOWARE Minecraft Mission.-Prepare a virtual space, the Nanoware Foundry where teachers will find all the support they need to use the educational package and drive its design and functionality for future releases.It is apparent from these activities that the involvement of the teachers is envisaged from the start of the project. This will break the natural resistance to new ways of doing things for the initial group of teachers that will be involved form the beginning and will cultivate a feeling of ownership as they will become major stakeholders. Their involvement from the start of the project will lead to incorporation of sustainability specifications to their initial design of the results and subsequently their long term viability.A series of targeted knowledge awareness activities with the help of the teachers, the teaching community and the associated partners will lead to the dissemination of project related knowledge and the spark of interest on the NST subject. The envisaged multiple events will be a great facilitator towards achieving the necessary awareness for the NANOWARE Foundry virtual space which will serve as the single point of access to all NANOWARE results and the communication and collaboration hub of the NANOWARE community of teachers and educators.<< Results >>The main outcome to increase awareness of nanotechnology among European science teachers and provide them with an educational package to allow them to integrate NST related activities to the science teaching setting will have multidimensional benefits for the students. Ultimately, the outcome for secondary school students will be a better understanding of NST and its interdisciplinary nature. As a result, NST related professional careers will be considered by more students leading to better employment opportunities for them and to the further growth of the NST industry and relative EU research.Important by-products also emerge from the promotion of Minecraft as a digital learning space for delivering Problem Based Learning experiences to students which enhance key competences and increase knowledge and awareness among subjects which are important for their future. The promotion of digital learning spaces is also a desirable outcome of the project as they offer an efficient solution with multidimensional benefits, especially in situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. The Minecraft Massively Multiplayer Online platform has penetrated to almost every EU house that has children of school age and its educational potential remains for the most part unexplored as today we can only find individual educational challenges as opposed to complete educational packages fulfilling a series of learning objectives. NANOWARE can also achieve a significant outcome in this aspect through the promotion of Minecraft as a digital learning space of high educational value.In order to achieve the envisaged outcomes, the project methodology comprises three tangible results:- R1: NANOWARE Educational Pack: comprising the Nanoware curriculum, glossary and online repository, the Nanoware Educators Guide and a Learning Motivation Environment which will deliver the material to the learners.- R2: NANOWARE Educational Challenges in Minecraft: a collection of educational challenges in Minecraft and the Nanoware Minecraft world comprising resource packs and mods for the challenges and instructional material and guides for parents and teachers- R3: NANOWARE Foundry: a foundry virtual space designed to power a community of adopters and provide a feedback loop mechanism to retain an open channel between the implementers of the Nanoware package (partners) and the adopters (school community) with a view to drive the evolution (corrective, perfective, evolutive maintenance) of the Nanoware package, initially by the partners and later on by the educational community itself. The foundry will feature also a recommendations pack for the use of the Foundry space and tools and the Nanoware skills & achievements framework for the recognition of knowledge acquired through Nanoware.These results are produced following an iterative methodology which will allow them to evolve by incorporating feedback from the testing and subsequently the validation of a previous version. An initial version will be first tested internally, and the outcome will drive the development for the next release, the validation release which will be validated under real conditions with representatives of the intended target group, secondary education science teachers. The conclusions from the validation will feed the corrective/perfective/evolutive maintenance of the final project release. Then, the feedback loop between the community of teachers that will use NANOWARE with their students and the partners, facilitated by the FOUNDRY virtual space, will drive the further maintenance of the educational package based on the needs of the NANOWARE community."