The Bio Valley College Network “Life Sciences Symposium” targets secondary school teachers and aims at enriching biology teaching with tried-and-tested modern experiments, working techniques, and up-to-date specialist knowledge. The programme centres on two specialist lectures and two 90-minute workshops, during which teachers engage in practical work and gain hands-on experience. In an exchange forum, ideas, equipment, and recent literature are presented and discussed at stands. Further institutions from the life sciences sector take part and present their activities.
This symposium took place on Saturday 21st of March 2026 at the Hans-Thoma-Gymnasium – SFZ phaenovum in Lörrach, Germany – this year’s host of the event. Andreas Schuck (EFI) and Frank Krumm (WSL) prepared and implemented one of many exciting workshops that teachers could sign up for. In German, they introduced the concept of marteloscopes as “forest classrooms” for school students in a 90-minute morning and afternoon workshop session named “Marteloskope – Willkommen im Waldklassenzimmer”! .
“We had two lively workshops with a lot of interest in marteloscopes, microhabitats, and our educational tools – especially how they can be applied in outdoor school learning”, says Andreas.
Some of the participants were very eager to learn where there are sites they could potentially visit.
“There is one near both Basel and Lörrach and can be reached easily within half an hour” , points out Frank.
Frank and Andreas hence encouraged interested teachers to contact them for a visit with their students at the nearby marteloscope and learn about forests and forestry directly “in the forest”. There was also the idea raised by teaches in the discussion that setting up a marteloscope could be an exciting project for students to implement near a school. Andreas noted that this has been tested with success in the EU Multipliers project with a school in Slovenia.
Andreas and Frank very much enjoyed the interaction with school teachers over the whole day; the good and inspiring discussions, as well as the two highly interesting keynote speeches on microbial communities in flowing waters and ergot alkaloids and LSD. Furthermore, they learned a lot about other exciting activities and experiments for biology lessons, both indoor and outdoor.