Festival follow-up in Bulgaria

The national and local organizing committees of Science on the Stage Bulgaria organized their follow-up event of the international Science on Stage Festival 2022 at the Vasil Levski High School in Sevlievo on 30.9 – 1.10.2022.

All activities from the program of the event took place in the Assembly Hall of the Vasil Levski High School. Exhibitions of posters presenting the Bulgarian projects at the international festival in Prague and several attractive stands in the lobby in front of the Assembly Hall were arranged by the hosts. To ensure greater accessibility, hybrid broadcasting was provided by Monika Kovashka-Dimitrova from SAP and a team of IT teachers from the school. The program was streamed live through an online platform, which allowed all of those who could not attend the venue physically to still follow the event with us.

The program of the event included information on the ‘International Year of Basic Science’ and Sustainable Development and the popular lecture “Space science and cosmonautics – sources of attractive examples in physics education” by Prof. Dr. Garo Mardirosyan from the Institute for Space Research and Technologies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Further, the impressions of the Bulgarian participants on the festival and the new ideas and good practices that have enriched their experience in teaching STE(A)M subjects in their classroom and extracurricular activity were shared in a very attractive presentation by Teodora Konova, one of the leaders of the Bulgarian delegation, and in short videos by all the members of the delegation. After these presentations, the members of the Bulgarian delegation at the festival in Prague were introduced as ambassadors of Science on Stage Bulgaria, and Nasko Stamenov a chemistry teacher at the National High School of Sciences and Mathematics in Sofia was elected as the Bulgarian ambassador for Science on Stage Europe. They all received respective certificates and small presents from the organizers.

Traditionally, workshops for teachers are of great interest, and our workshops are always highly appreciated at international festivals as well. With a lot of enthusiastic participants in the Assembly Hall and online, the workshops “Together from a distance” by Michael Gregory from Science on Stage France (online) and Nasko Stamenov from the National High School of Sciences and Mathematics showed some interesting and easy chemistry and physics experiments, simple to be implemented not only in each classroom but even from the students at home. Milena Gosheva and Greta Rajchovska together with a student from  Sofia demonstrated a workshop “How to do Science in a Box!" which offered an idea to physics and science teachers of how to increase student’s motivation to learn through the basics of robotics, combining microcontroller programming skills to illustrate physics’ lows in an engaging way.

These two workshops were followed by two very motivating lectures for the science teachers: “Contacts from the international festivals and ideas for creating a joint project” by Rumyanka Galchavova a science teacher from Silistra and "Inspiring STEM Resources in the Classroom and Beyond" by Ivo Jokin from the Municipal Center for extracurricular activities, Baikal village. At the end, the organizers of the event outlined the regulations and conditions for participation in the upcoming national (2023) and international (2024) festivals. 

Overall, 62 science teachers (STEM teachers) from all levels of education in our country, including preschool and kindergartens, participated in our follow-up event  – 15 online and 47 in person, which gives us hope that in the future we will have more participants at the national festival and that the jury selection for the Science on Stage festival will be better motivated.

Report: Ana Georgieva