Educate Bulgarian Children with Khan Academy

Dear Friends,

We already exchanged some traditional Bulgarian red and white martenitsas to celebrate the end of winter – a season generally regarded as the time when everything is resting and preparing for the upcoming spring. But we haven’t been resting these past three months!

Newly translated STEM subjects: Chemistry and Organic Chemistry

You have probably noticed that the number of courses available in Bulgarian is constantly growing! Thanks to the continuous support of Telus International Europe’s Community Board, for less than one year we completed two important STEM subjects by translating 531 videos and 43 000 words: general chemistry and organic chemistry. Every day we are drowning in a sea of information, so knowing the basis of sciences like chemistry can prevent us from being easily manipulated, and knowing more opens diverse possibilities to explore our world and contribute to wellbeing.

Our own Bulgarian math courses in Khan Academy!

In our previous report, we mentioned that we are working on a new and very important project – visualizing Khan content according to the Bulgarian educational standards. This effort is possible thanks to your donations, to the support of our main partner – the America for Bulgaria Foundation, and to the great cooperation with Khan Academy’s Headquarters in the US.

And you can already see the results! Check out first and second grade (math), tell us what you think and how we can improve it.

New approach to video dubbing

For the past several months, we have been testing a new approach – instead of dubbing video lessons by reading the Bulgarian subtitles word by word, we decided to focus on video recreation. The recreator can prepare their own script, based on the subtitles, but remain more flexible and adapt it, closer to standards in our educational system or because of the need to replace English words emerging on the video screen with handwritten words in Bulgarian. If you are curious what a “recreated” video looks like, check out some of our Physics videos by our talented team member Stanislava Koparanova.
We are also in the middle of selecting our “Math voice and hand”, so stay tuned!

Meet our volunteers

We are truly fortunate in being able to cooperate with amazing people that believe in the importance of our cause, and support our efforts. Stanislava Dimitrova is one of those ambitious young people who is helping our team while continuously working on improving herself – she was the first person to achieve bronze, silver and gold levels for The Duke of Edinburgh's International Award in Bulgaria.

Stanislava started helping us when she was in 11th grade, and for one year she single-handedly translated 40 videos from the Astronomy and Cosmology subject. If you want to know more about Stanislava and why she decided to volunteer, watch our 1-minute video with her!

Microscopes for 3 Bulgarian high schools

Two high school students, Magdalena Milanova and Rosi Todorovska, impressed us with their desire to help more students experience the magic of Biology. They wanted to raise money to buy and donate microscopes for 3 high schools in Sofia, and to achieve this goal, they organized a campaign on Indiegogo, and also held a charity exhibition with their own microscopic photos of different organisms. Our team supported Magi and Rosi with mentorship based on our campaign experience, and also by sharing the information about their project.

Teacher’s trainings

We are continuing at full strength with our trainings for teachers! In January, with our partners from the Center for Creative Training (CCT), we organized a 2-day training session, where we presented Khan Academy’s resources and gave participating teachers ideas how to use the platform as a tool for class management. We also showed them other digital tools which can help them be much more engaging for their students and spend quality time with them.

Our next training is for math and primary teachers and is scheduled for 8-9 March in Sofia.

Our team is growing

Two new members have joined our team to help us with our mission to provide free world-class education to more and more Bulgarian children! Marieta Radulova will support us as a project coordinator. Vnesa Madzharova started as our new intern and we will count on her to help us spread the word about Khan Academy.

State of the translation effort today

Results from the past 3 months (03.12.2018-28.02.2019):

• Translation: 145 K words and 365 videos (Math, Physics, Chemistry)
• Proofreading: 385 K words and 410 videos (Math, Physics, Astronomy)
• Newly dubbed/recreated: 8 video lessons (Physics and Math)

Khan Academy usage growth  

Results for the past 3 months:

• Sessions: 90% growth year over year
• Users: 83% growth year over year

Everything we are doing, we can’t do without you! We are really counting on any individual donation to keep us going. Thank you for all your support. We are especially happy that many of you decide to help us with a monthly recurring donation or when whole teams in big corporations like Google Germany or VMware Bulgaria decide to donate! THANK YOU!

Your contribution is being complemented by donations of big organizations and we would like to thank them too: Our main partner, the America for Bulgaria Foundation, supporting our efforts in localizing Math and Physics; the Community Board of Telus International Europe supporting the localization of Chemistry and Organic chemistry; Skyscanner with a donation for dubbing and video editing of our Computing courses; We are very happy that new sponsors are joining – for example the cake makers from Nedelya.

Please spread the word and help us for even bigger steps in educating Bulgarian children at a world-class level with Khan Academy!

Links:

• First grade (math) according to the Bulgarian curriculum
• First recreated videos (Physics)
• Meet our volunteers: Stanislava Dimitrova

Dear Friends!

Three months passed like a moment! They were really hectic as usual, but also extremely exciting on the other hand!

Khan Academy Language Advocate International Convention

From October 28th to October 30th, Khan Academy’s Headquarters hosted in California a big international convention, inviting there all organizations that work for the localization of the site into different languages. With the invaluable help of our supporters like you who donated for this cause, our localization coordinator Melli Popova was able to attend the convention. Our financial director, Daniel Cholakov, joined the meeting from Chicago.

Two years ago, the first edition of this conference was held in Sofia, organized by our team! It was really successful, and since then, Khan Academy’s Headquarters have initiated many specific steps towards more effective global localization of the platform.

During the convention, we discussed and decided together on future improvements, we shared international experiences, past mistakes, ideas for better education, and we also visited the very impressive innovative Khan Lab School. And most importantly, we discussed thoroughly the ongoing project for Khan content visualization according to local educational standards – pivotal for introducing Khan Academy to local schools and thus to improving access to high-quality and free education in Bulgaria. Supporting us you become part of shaping the future of education in Bulgaria too!

During the international convention, Khan Academy founder Salman Khan recorded a video. All language advocates that came to Khan Academy Headquarters in California presented themselves to the world. You can also virtually say hi to the Bulgarian team representatives – Daniel (@01:24) and Melli (@02:34)!

Draw with Khan Academy and JavaScript: workshop for pupils during the European Code week

We organized a great event during  this year’s European Code week! We invited (mainly) students 5th to 8th grade and we showed them how easy it is to start coding with Khan Academy: just watch the video, then try out coding by yourself and see immediately the results! At the end of our 3-hours session, children were able to draw different objects with code: a snowman, a frog, dinner plates, etc.  

This exciting event was possible thanks to the support of the Meet and Code Initiative by Workshop for Civic Initiatives Foundation, SAP TechSoup. Thank you also to all volunteers who helped us!

Teacher’s trainings

Thanks to the partnership with the company Haemimont, recently we have piloted 2 special trainings for math teachers, giving qualification credits as well. We presented to the teachers Khan Academy resources and gave them ideas how to use the platform  as a tool for class management. We also showed them other digital tools which can help them be much more engaged and spend quality time with their students. Our next teacher training is scheduled for 11-12 December in Varna.

Viber

Just to remind and update you: our great Viber free stickers have been downloaded more than 42 000 times up to now, and will be available on the sticker market for one more month, until mid January 2019! For learning challenges or inspiration, download our chatbot or join the Viber community for teachers and all those who are interested in the future of the Bulgarian education.

Khan Academy in Bulgarian - available also offline with Kolibri

Since the beginning of the new school year Khan Academy in Bulgarian is available offline too. As you know,  access to digital resources in schools depends on the access to the internet. A good or any internet connection is still a challenge in many Bulgarian schools unfortunately. With Kolibri you can use Khan Academy in Bulgarian even offline - after you download the Khan Academy () channel to a simple USB, use a teacher’s device as a server and connect to other devices using a hotspot.

Another good side effect: sometimes it is helpful if children do not get distracted by the many tempting possibilities on the Internet.

For more information, visit Kolibri website.

Kolibri is a free product by Learning Equality.

State of the translation effort today

Results from the past 3 months (10.09.2018-02.12.2018) :

• Translation: 307 K words and 370 videos (Math, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, Biology)
• Proofreading: 380 K words and 320 videos (Math, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy)
• Newly dubbed: 92 video lessons (Computing).

 Khan Academy usage growth  

Results for the past 3 months:

• Sessions: 62% growth year over year
• Users: 65% growth year over year

We can hardly express how happy we are to have you and all supporting organizations behind us! Your support means a lot to us and most importantly - to all students who want to learn and to live up to their potential. We continue to count on you - take some time towards the end of the year and make a new donation or spread the word about our work and impact. Thank you!

Links:

• Viber stickers
• Sal Khan video from the international convention
• Kolibri