The Volvox project team is a group of biology teachers and specialists from ten countries across the European Union. We aim to provide secondary school biology teachers and others with proven laboratory protocols, simulations, classroom activities and numerous other educational resources. On this trial web site you can find some samples of the Volvox resources to download and use in the classroom or school laboratory plus computer simulations to use on-line.
All of these resources are free for non-commercial use by teachers.
When will Volvox be completed?
The project has ended but the Volvox websites are being kept active so that teachers can still find the many Volvox resources in nine different languages. The languages of the Volvox project are Danish, English, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish. The web sites of the project were completed in Autumn 2008 though new materials are still being made available on some sites.
Who funded Volvox?
The Volvox project was funded by the European Commission's 'Science and Society' programme. You can find more details in the acknowledgements section of this web site.
The alga Volvox is made up of hundreds of cells living together for mutual benefit. They represent a major evolutionary transition from single cells towards co-operative multi-cellular life, although the association is relatively loose. All of the cells in a Volvox colony are connected by a network of minute cytoplasmic threads. Eventually the bundles of cells within a colony break away to form new colonies of their own. In many ways this mirrors the Volvox project, except that the strands connecting our partners are the electronic 'threads' of the internet.