Education Bulgaria Project #23525

Educate Bulgarian Children with Khan Academy

by Education Without Backpacks

Educate Bulgarian Children with Khan Academy

Project Report | May 31, 2023
The world is changing. Can education keep up?

By Melli Popova | Operations Manager

Spread the word about our upcoming webinar!

New technology is developing faster than ever and the educational system needs to keep up. It is no surprise that platforms such as Khan Academy are among the first to embrace the inevitable change. Salman Khan is already exploring the potential for AI in a limited pilot: GPT4 is carefully adapted to Khan Academy’s learning environment to guide students as they progress through courses and to assist teachers with administrative tasks.

We, from “Education Without Backpacks”, are also giving our best to support teachers from Bulgaria and EU to dive into the world of artificial intelligence and gain ideas on how to leverage its strengths and manage the risks of platforms like ChatGPT. Learn more about our efforts below!

Supporting teachers and schools

The past few months have been highly productive as we engaged numerous teachers to explore the implementation of digital teaching practices and to familiarize themselves with the possibilities of AI in education.

We conducted a Khan4STEM* workshop for teachers with 35 participants from across the country, where we introduced them to platforms such as ChatGPT, and we showed them practical steps for incorporating digital practices in their classrooms.
To enhance teachers' and principals' understanding of the latest European and global practices in smart digitalization for math and science classrooms, we also organized a free Khan4STEM webinar. Over 1000 individuals registered for the event, we had over 280 participants online, and the recording continues to receive numerous new views from teachers.
In order to expand the reach of Khan Academy in Bulgaria and support more students in their math and science learning journeys, we established a teacher ambassador program. 15 educators from various regions of the country joined this initiative and for 3 months actively presented Khan Academy to their colleagues.
To support the wider dissemination of Khan Academy, we organized a meeting with representatives from the Regional Education Departments. 28 employees from 16 regions in Bulgaria participated in the event.
At the Prepodavame.bg conference “Good Practices in Focus”, we conducted a workshop to show how to engage students to learn with Khan with approximately 15 teachers from different schools across the country. Additionally, we introduced approximately 100 attendees to our work and demonstrated how to incorporate Khan Academy into their classrooms.
We held a workshop with a school team of 28 teachers to explore innovative educational approaches.
To assist teachers and principals in devising strategies for digitalizing learning processes at both classroom and school levels, we offered a 5-week online course “Introduction to Schools Digitalization” with our partners from Software University. This pilot course serves as an introduction to our upcoming Digital School Leaders program for schools. Stay tuned for more details coming soon.

On June 28th, together with our partners from Bibliothèques Sans Frontières Belgique, we are organizing a Khan4STEM webinar in English for teachers across Europe. Please, spread the word about our upcoming webinar "The Power of Smart Digitalization in Schools"!

*The project "KHAN4STEM: More effective and inclusive European Math and Science Teaching – supported by the internationalized work of European Khan Academy Advocates" is financed by Erasmus+ program of the European Commission, Key Activity 2. It is implemented by "Libraries Without Borders" (Belgium) and "Education Without Backpacks" (Bulgaria).

Spring Competitions with Khan Academy

LearnStorm online competitions: This spring, we conducted our first LearnStorm (Khanoniada) Challenge to help STEM teachers engage their whole classes in a fun and meaningful way, while fostering a positive attitude towards learning. More than 3000 participants were registered by their teachers.

LearnStorm live demo at Sofia Science Festival: At the annual Sofia Science Festival, we held two live LearnStorm competitions for whole classes and demonstrated how teachers can motivate their students to willingly solve math problems.

Art history competition: To promote our newly translated Art History courses (see below), we launched an online quiz for high school students who want to learn more about ancient and modern art. We will award 10 students and 2 teachers at a special ceremony held in the National Academy of Arts in Sofia.

More STEAM in Bulgarian schools

We launched 2 new Art History courses in Khan Academy, and now all students in Bulgaria can learn more about Art of Ancient Mediterranean and Europe, and Modern art in the XX century.

We also published 1 new math course on Khan Academy to help students prepare for free for the national math assessment after 7th grade. To be even more helpful for the students, we developed a list with additional content and resources at our site at obr.education

The 3 new courses came to life under the project “Arts and Math together – for more STEAM in Bulgarian schools with Khan Academy”, with the support of the US Embassy in Sofia. The project promotes free STEAM education for all Bulgarian students specifically through arts and math content on Khan Academy.

Khan Academy localization for the period February 2023 – April 2023

Translation:

199 words and 7 videos (48 minutes) in Art history and Ecology.

Proofreading:

326K words and 263 videos (2018 minutes) in Art history, Health and Medicine, Biology, Resources.

Thank you so much for your support!

And don't forget: #YouCanLearnAnything :)

First official Khan Ambassadors in Bulgaria!

New art history courses available in Bulgarian!

Links:

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Feb 2, 2023
Our heroes, the teachers!

By Melli Popova | Coordinator

Our first conference!

Dear Friends,

Last month, our chairman Ivan Gospodinov gave a truly inspirational speech that reminded us yet again how important teachers are. They can be not only role models for their students, but also real superheroes who do much more than what is expected from them. This simple truth inspired us to focus our efforts even more on enabling teachers to help children reach their full potential, also through Khan Academy.

Education Without Backpacks’ first conference and Salman Khan’s first interview for the Bulgarian Audience

In October 2022, we held our first Annual Conference: “The Two Faces of Technology in Education: Stress and Progress”. Teachers, principals, the two previous ministers of education, representatives of the Ministry of Education and its structures, and the expert non-governmental sector in education participated in panel discussions and workshops on topics related to the smart, effective and balanced use of technology, as well as the risks and care for the mental health of teachers and students.

Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, also joined the event remotely. In his first interview for the Bulgarian audience, he discussed how high quality ed tech can help with the problem that teachers and students often focus more on grades than on deep learning. Sal emphasized on the importance of mastery learning and of the human factor in education. Khan Academy founder also talked about his personal experience with burnout and advised teachers to try meditation as a method that successfully helps dealing with stress.

“Mathematics is for everyone” – another national teachers conference and Ivan Gospodinov’s speech

On December 15, 2022, Vasil Levski School in Razgrad organized a National Conference "Mathematics is for everyone". The forum was focused on best pedagogical practices of mathematics education in junior high school. Marieta Radulova and Ivan Gospodinov from our team presented Khan Academy and Salman Khan’s story, and the various possibilities that the tool is giving to teachers and students.

The conference was part of a year-long project – within its framework, we were responsible for training the school team to implement Khan Academy and to help the 6th graders of the school to catch up on gaps in mathematics, especially after the pandemic. This project was awarded as a good practice by Prepodavame.bg and Teach for Bulgaria.

Khan Academy’s popularity is growing!

We are very excited to announce that we just welcomed Khan Academy’s first advertising billboard in Bulgaria, with more on their way! For this amazing opportunity, we are grateful to our generous partners from Omedi and Algorithmity, as well as to one of our long-term individual supporters.

Face to face communication is crucial when it comes to conveying the message of the importance of access to free word-class education. To better explain Khan Academy’s benefits to teachers and students, we participated in several key events as guest speakers, panelists, presenters, exhibitors, including OpenFest 2022, STEAM Shkolo pod para, “Mathematics is for everyone” national conference in Razgrad, VMWare’s Charity Bazaar, and more.

Khan Academy localization for the period October 2022 – January 2023

Translation:

133 900 words and 47 videos (330 minutes) in Art History, Math and Economics.

Proofreading:

328 200 words and 250 videos (2006 minutes) in Physics, Health and Medicine, Computers, Art History.

New content on Khan Academy – this autumn we published a brand new chemistry course aligned to the Bulgarian curriculum. We also curated and published our first Art history introductory course.

All this is possible thanks to your amazing support, as well as the support of our main partner, the America for Bulgaria Foundation, and other partners, such as the US Embassy in Sofia!

Thank you so much! #YouCanLearnAnything!

Math is easy with Khan Academy!

Spreading the word!

Khan's popularity is growing - our first billboard

Links:

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Oct 5, 2022
Reinventing education with Khan Academy

By Aleksandra Kostova | Digital marketing and Communications

Khan Academy National online contest winners'

Dear Friends,

Innovation and tech are changing the world we live in and education has to adapt to this better and faster. We, from Education Without Backpacks, see this need and devote our work to aid Bulgarian children to receive a world-class education for FREE. In the past four months we were focused on popularizing Khan Academy in Bulgaria and all the new great content in it, and to further our effort in building a healthy cooperation with the Bulgarian Ministry of Education.

National online contests in Math, Computing and Ecology & Biology with Khan Academy - results
For a third consecutive year, from March to June 2022, we organized our National students' contests with Khan Academy. Thanks to our amazing sponsors from eMAG Bulgaria, we were able to award 60 hardworking students and engaged teachers! The contestants were from all over Bulgaria - big cities, small towns, even villages! This really is a great proof that Khan Academy is inspiring anyone anywhere. This year we made a special event to award the winners in the contest in Ecology & Biology. We joined efforts with the Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation, the Faculty of Biology of Sofia's University "St. Kliment Ohridski" and the “Sci-High” Foundation and together we organized the "Youth - for the Earth!" Festival. Apart from making it an unforgettable experience for our winners, we worked to increase the awareness and commitment of students and young people in Bulgaria on the topics of biodiversity conservation, prevention of environmental problems and adaptation to climate change

New initiatives and partnerships

“Arts and Math together - for more STEAM in Bulgarian schools with Khan Academy”
To enable students and teachers to learn/teach more about the arts and art history in an easily accessible, completely free way, we started the localization of Khan Academy Art History content. Initially, we started the translation process with some of our volunteers. After a successful grant application to the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria, we launched a project that promotes free STEAM education for all Bulgarian students specifically through arts and math content on Khan Academy. Under this partnership project, currently we are translating two big art history courses from Khan Academy - Ancient Mediterranean and Modernisms 1900-1980. Another goal of the project is to create a free preparational course in Khan Academy for grade 7th math exam that all students obligatorily pass in Bulgaria.

KHAN4STEM exchange project with Belgium aiming to support the digital readiness of teachers
In the summer we met with the team of Libraries Without Borders - our partner in the Erasmus+ project Khan4STEM and also a Khan Academy langage advocate in Belgium.
We exchanged ideas on creating a handbook for teachers: how to integrate educational technologies in their teaching and support other teacher colleagues to work with new digital tools and resources.
The project Khan4STEM: More effective and inclusive European Math and Science Teaching - supported by the internationalized work of European Khan Academy Advocates - is financed by Erasmus+ program of the European Commission under Key activity 2.

Cooperation with the Ministry of Education on a new national online platform “Digital Backpack”
During the summer our team was consulting and supporting the Ministry of Education of Bulgaria for a new national platform which will be released and available for free for all schools in Bulgaria. We had cooperated with almost 90 teachers throughout Bulgaria for a complicated and important task. We hope that all teachers and students in the country will benefit from this new online platform.

New Khan Academy tool for Bulgarian teachers - LearnStorm
In October the LearnStorm tracker on Khan Academy will be available for all Bulgarian teachers! The tool helps to motivate the students on any task the teacher assigns them - whether they're completing assignments or practicing skills to reach a Mastery goal in a course, their progress will be measured by the tool.
This tool celebrates team success - we hope it will encourage students to achieve common learning goals and master more and more skills!.

New content on Khan Academy - this summer we published two new courses in Bulgarian - Computers and the Internet and Finance and Capital Markets, both of them translated entirely by volunteers!

Khan Academy localization for the period June 2022 – September 2022
Translation:

200 000 words and 97 videos (535 minutes) in Art History, Computing, Science, Resources and other topics.

Proofreading:

660 000 words and 124 videos (887 minutes) in Science, Art History, Computing, Economics and other topics.

All this is possible thanks to the support of partners like the America for Bulgaria Foundation and the US Embassy in Sofia, as well as all your support!

Thank you so much! #YouCanLearnAnything!

"Youth - for the Earth!" Festival

KHAN4STEM exchange project with Belgium

New Khan Academy tool

One of our dedicated volunteers

Links:

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