Space adventure - and science learning - with the Guardians of the Millennium

A week of events will showcase projects compiled all year round at the Netd@ys Europe 1999 website.

The week starts formally on Saturday but has been launched - in Helsinki - on Friday with multimedia presentations and discussions on the theme Learning Culture of the Next Millennium.

One of those taking on the international panel is Charlotte Mear, a pupil at Monkseaton Community High School, a specialist language comprehensive in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, England.

The launch events are being streamed live on the web. One of the day's features is a chance for children to chat live with Santa Claus at 11.00 GMT.

Teacher training

The projects that schools are involved in are aimed at promoting the educational use of online technology, the message being that learning with the internet is fun.

A Spanish association of educational centres has decided to make teacher training in the use of the internet a priority. More than 15,000 teachers are going to be involved in a major awareness-raising and training campaign during Netd@ys 99, linking theory with apprenticeship and self-evaluation.

But the range of subject matter is very wide. For instance, a Sicilian hotel and catering school, supported by the regional tourism office and the Sicilian co-operative wine growers' association, is inviting other schools from the Mediterranean area to prepare traditional menus and exchange them online.

Movies, opera and art are all featured. There are games to interest in science, courtesy of the National Centre for Educational Resources in Norway.

An Irish school has come up with a space knowledge adventure to explore time-travel, galaxies, solar systems, comets, meteorites, asteroids and planets. Students in 200 primary schools throughout Europe and 40 other countries will take part.

Scet's Through My Window project on the climate

Scottish Council for Educational Technology (Scet), Apple Computer Europe and the University of Li_ are organising courses on the theme of climatic conditions in 13 European countries, Turkey, Russia, the USA and Japan.

All materials will be available on the internet and linked to worldwide educational networks.

There is history, from Helsinki City Museum. And, looking to the future, the Italian Association ICS is organising a Netd@ys competition inviting students to prepare and present projects on various aspects of the quality of urban life.

A Belgian association is tracing the traditional migration route of storks between Belgium and Africa to discover more about the birds and the regions and human environments they fly across.

Even prisoners are taking part: within the limits of the French penal code - which does not allow prisoners direct access to the net - a project in Poissy involves education and professional training aimed at making it easier to reintegrate them into the jobs market when they end their sentences.