OSOS- Open Schools for Open Societies- is an international project led in Israel by the ORT Israel Network’s Research and Development Administration, in collaboration with the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem. The project aims at promoting science and technology innovation by creating a culture of schools that are open to the community. There are nineteen partners in the project: museums, universities, schools’ networks, teachers and school principals’ organizations from all over Europe, Israel, the United States and Australia. It is part of the European Horizon 2020 program.
The project aims at providing pupils with advanced science and technology studies, through collaboration with various bodies. It also aims at positioning the school as central to the sharing of advanced scientific and technological knowledge in the community.
A pilot of the project was conducted in ten schools across Israel in 2017-2018. In each of these schools, teachers and pupils led a project of their choice, employing the learning method for this program: working on a chosen project while collaborating with the academia, the industry, local authorities, municipal cultural and educational institutions, etc.
The ten schools which participated in the pilot served in 2018-2019 as Hubs: collaborative knowledge and learning centers. The schools’ teachers and pupils recruited colleagues in additional schools to carry out projects while collaborating with their own communities. Thus, by the end of 2019, over 100 schools all over Israel will have participated in the project. The same process is taking place simultaneously in ten other European countries, and in total the OSOS community will encompass over 1,000 European schools!
As part of the OSOS- Open Schools for Open Societies- project, ORT’s Development Center and the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem maintain an ongoing cooperation with the European representatives of the project. In April 2018, we hosted in Israel a delegation of twenty-four European representatives. The delegation’s representatives visited the schools, spoke with the teachers and the pupils, observed the projects, and were impressed with the results.
In the summer of 2018, five of the project’s teachers in Israel flew to the city of Marathon in Greece for a week-long summer school. The teachers presented the activities performed with the pupils in Israel, learned about the activities taking place in schools in other countries, and formed international connections and collaborations for the year 2019.
We invite local authorities, industrial companies, academic institutions, etc. to help promote the project’s success by collaborating with our schools, thus contributing their time and knowledge for the sake of the Israeli society and the scientific education in Israel.