The aim of this project is to provide young citizens and their educators (teachers, parents, etc.) across Europe with a range of e-Infrastructures and access to expert knowledge on their usage for a joyful exploration of e-Science through e-Infrastructure.  GLOBAL excursion targets pupils between 14-18 years of age.  Participating schools and science communicators will engage in communication and teaching activities.

The main purpose of the GLOBAL excursion project is to enable students and teachers to access the experimental laboratories and resources of selected e-Infrastructures in order to improve science curricula by enriching schools’ existing teaching and learning materials.  By connecting e-Infrastructures, resources and tools with schools, pupils can experience challenging and authentic learning scenarios.  Thus, students gain insights in real scientific work and revitalise interest in natural science education.

Another objective within GLOBAL excursion is to enable an ever increasing number of users from all science and engineering disciplines to publish, and effectively disseminate their use of e-infrastructure in order to increase participation levels in research of global relevance and to allow potential users to access and share facilities and instruments. In this context four big areas of science have been selected to be initial use cases for the GLOBAL excursion: nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, volunteer computing and life sciences.

Those areas cover different phases of the scientific chain: fundamental and theoretical research, applied developments, use of technologies and dissemination. The selected areas represent strategic research topics selected by the EU as relevant for the future of the European Society. Researchers of those lines have acquired already a long experience in the usage of the e-Infrastructures. Current technologies allow remote operation of infrastructures, interaction between stakeholders and other community management issues. This makes possible to go one step forward in the scientific communication for those e-Infrastructures addressing the t-Infrastructures (Training infrastructures).