GIFT2011: The delicate balance between Chicxulub impact and/or Deccan traps

GIFT presentation by Jan Smit (full title: The delicate balance between Chicxulub impact and/or Deccan traps induced mass-extinctions at the K-Pg boundary) at the 2011 General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union. The 2011 Workshop, http://webtv.egu.eu/gift/2011/, covered Evolution and Biodiversity. (Credit: EGU/Cactus)

The EGU Committee on Education has organized Geosciences Information For Teachers (GIFT) Workshops since 2003. These are two-and-a-half-day teacher enhancement workshops held in conjunction with EGU's annual General Assembly. There, selected top-level scientists working in the Earth Sciences offer the invited teachers talks centered on a different theme every year.

The main objective of the GIFT workshops is to spread first-hand scientific information to science teachers of primary and secondary schools, significantly shortening the time between discovery and textbook, and to provide the teachers with material that can be directly transported to the classroom. In addition, the full immersion of science teachers in a truly scientific context (EGU General Assemblies) and the direct contact with world leader geoscientists are expected to stimulate curiosity towards scientific research that the teachers then transmit to their pupils.