Wednesday 4th November 2015 marked the 5th anniversary of the opening of the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, an institution encouraging interest in science among wide and diverse audiences. They celebrated the occasion with the opening of a new exhibition called “Look there’s the earth” in the planetarium, and with over 5,003,000 visitors to date. The originator of the Centre, professor of theoretical physics Prof. Lukasz Turski, describes Copernicus as “the rebel battleship of change in Polish education. Around which thousands of other small projects gather. They support, for example, almost 400 Young Discoverers Clubs located mostly in small cities and villages schools. We also train considerable numbers of teachers per year”. The Centre’s mission is to encourage personal engagement in discovering and understanding the world, as well as taking responsibility for the changes occurring in that world. The Centre draws together people and organisations to create a community that believes in development through science, and utilises scientific achievement to encourage critical thinking and discovery of the world. Prof. Lukasz Turski was a speaker at the recent International MOOC event in Capri, where, in his talk, he embraced technological innovation in education but warned that online learning still has to address the needs of the individual if it is to be successful.
