The founding issue of this online periodical  has been successfully launched in July, 2000 by the Science Department of Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) for the effectiveness and interest of learning and teaching science subjects in schools.  Printed promotional leaflets have been mailed to all Science and General Studies teachers in over 1,300 Hong Kong secondary and primary schools and promotional emails have also  been sent via various email listing servers to all school teachers and teacher educators in Hong Kong.  With the help of our Guest Editor, Mr. X.J. Wang and other scholars, this online periodical has been made known to many teacher training colleges and normal universities in mainland China and in other Asia-Pacific countries or regions.  Up to now, the founding issue has attracted over 37,000 visits.

The Issue Two is featured with a distinguished foreword by Prof. Y.C. Cheng on the new trend of science education and two refereed academic papers. One paper from a science educator in China was about nurturing and training of creative thinking ability in science and the other one from three teacher educators in Hong Kong discussed on the assessment of science learning in schools.  There are three other multimedia articles on various aspects of teaching and learning in schools and they contain many photos, powerpoint files, webpages and video clips which provide vivid descriptions on some aspects of school teaching experiences. Furthermore, this issue includes  not only the continuation of the two special sections on primary science, namely "Examples of inquiry activities in primary science" (edited by Winnie So) and "Primary Science Newsletter - Issue Two" (edited by Yeung Chung Lee) but also a new special section called "A collection of video clips for primary General Studies (P1~3)" (edited by Winnie So and Vincent Hung with over 300 video clips) which should be very useful for classroom multimedia teaching.  All of them are converted into this Internet version from their original printed or CD-ROM versions.  Feedback/comments on individual articles and advice for improvement of this online periodical are always welcomed and can be communicated to us by various channels available in this website.

Finally, we would like to express our special thanks to Dr. K.K. Ho, Prof. Xingkai Luo and Prof. John Elliott who have provided valuable comments on the contributed articles.  Thanks are also due to all those who have contributed articles in this issue  and all research assistants and colleagues in the HKIEd Science Department who offered their help in developing and promoting this online periodical.  Apart from the sponsors highlighted in the founding issue, additional support from the McGraw-Hill Book Company (AccessScience@ McGRAW- HILL)  is gratefully acknowledged.