By Melli Popova | Operations Manager
As we continue our journey to enhance mathematical literacy among Bulgarian students, our two pilot schools have shown amazing progress and dedication. We are excited to announce that we will support at least ten additional schools across the country by autumn 2024!
Celebrating our pilot students' success
“I had the opportunity to fully appreciate the meaningfully structured content and intuitive interface of Khan Academy, which largely meets the needs of students so they don't feel lost in the multitude of concepts, topics, and sections they go through each year in mathematics. This is even more relevant for bilingual children and students with systemic gaps, whom I teach.”
This was shared by Danail Raykov, one of our pilot teachers under the three-year project “Better Math Results in Lower Secondary Schools with Khan Academy,” financed by UniCredit Foundation. We are happy to share that both pilot teachers noticed a positive change in their students—in terms of responsibility, motivation to learn, and participation in class activities.
We celebrated the end of the first semester with a Learnstorm competition (Khanoniada). The students showcased their math skills, enjoyed treats, and received small Khan awards. They also received certificates highlighting their learning time at Khan Academy. Some true champions spent over seven hours in intensive training on the platform.
At an open lesson in one of our pilot schools, students demonstrated their ease and enthusiasm in working with Khan Academy to an impressed audience, including Deputy Minister of Education Dr. Emilia Lazarova.
Digital School Leaders’ First Results
Simultaneously, our six-month mentoring program "Digital School Leaders" is currently in its practical implementation phase, where trainees develop innovative plans based on the specific ideas of their schools. And some of them are already testing the newly gained knowledge in their classrooms!
The overall goal of the program is to equip key school personnel with the necessary skills to navigate and embrace digitalization, ensuring a comprehensive and forward-thinking approach to education.
New Advisory Board
We are pleased to announce the new Board of Advisors of the Association "Education without Backpacks"! This board includes inspiring individuals with great dedication to education and exceptional experience in various fields:
The goal of the Advisory Board is to help shape our financial strategy, promote "Education without Backpacks" and Khan Academy, guide our mission for Bulgarian education, and advise on leadership and organizational development.
Khan Academy International Conference
We participated in the annual international conference of Khan Academy in Vietnam. During the event, we learned that we will finally be able to create and upload local content to the Khan Academy platform. This means videos, articles, and math exercises developed by us to fully cover the Bulgarian curriculum. We are already working hard to start adding missing content to be even more useful for Bulgarian teachers and students.
AI is the New Craze!
In January 2024, we completed the localization into Bulgarian of a brand new Khan Academy course: AI in Education. The course examines the topics of AI in education, the prospects and risks of AI technologies, and provides good practices for using AI in developing lesson plans, tests, and opportunities for students to use AI as a helper and mentor for their tasks.
In February, we hosted a webinar for teachers to introduce the new AI course and provide practical information on how they can integrate AI into their daily work. The webinar was highly popular among teachers, with over 1,000 people registering. Throughout the webinar, we received several interesting questions. As a result, we have decided to address these questions in a series of articles tailored for teachers seeking guidance on AI implementation.
Khan Academy Localization for the Period January 2024 – April 2024
Thank you for supporting us on this journey and helping us expand our impact!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
