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Short Title: IntSchool Proposal URL:http://classic.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=402 The work proposed here is aimed at developing web-based educational tools for pre-university students to let them explore, understand and communicate on polar issues. Specific goals are 1) to increase the knowledge and understanding of polar issues at the pre-university level internationally, 2) to increase the student's interest for natural and social sciences for polar regions, 3) assist polar research by encouraging meaningful data collection and reports by pre-university groups, 4) to encourage and facilitate exchange and communication between the participants. The target group are students aged ~13-18 worldwide. The material will cover all six IPY themes and relevant inter-disciplinary topics. The aim is to inspire pupils to seek information about the polar regions and to increase their understanding of polar issues, both for natural and social sciences. The pupils will be provided with links to resources and should work as scientists by combining background knowledge, scientific data, as well as national and international hands-on learning activities (for instance GLOBE protocols). The students will be provided with a web-based report-generating tool to generate scientific reports based on information and material from the scientific findings of IPY work and other polar factual resources. The pupils then assess and conclude on the basis of both the scientist's and their own findings. The IntSchool report-generating tools will be tailored for the specific IPY themes, but also for relevant inter-disciplinary topics covering natural and social sciences, relevant topics important for the local communities of the respective schools and from ongoing IPY projects. The report generator will utilize both existing resources on polar issues and new findings from the IPY projects as well as tools and hands-on educational activities made by various Organisation in different countries. An e-mail based technical help-desk service will be provided for the teachers. Guidelines on how to use these activities for polar issues will be provided and the scientific editors for the solution will be able to communicate with the students and give them feedback on their work. The participating schools will be encouraged to communicate and exchange experience by e-mail correspondence or other Internet communication tools. The IntSchool educational tool will give a key contribution to reaching IPY's overall educational goals, as well as contribute to the outreach and communication goals. All support and technical solutions are based on extensive experience in designing and implementing such tools. This overall solution combines the experience, expertise and existing solutions from educational systems, scientific work and web-based solutions, developed and tested in several polar countries over the last decade, into a modern educational tool for IPY. The partners include institutions with extensive scientific knowledge on polar issues, pedagogic institutions with vast experience of hands-on and learning through doing education both in polar communities and internationally, and experts on the development of web-solutions for education. This will ensure: -Scientific and educational top expertise -Years of experience with hands-on education -Coverage of both polar regions and all IPY themes -Technical detailed experience and knowledge on building and hosting the solution.