by Spyros Arsenikos and Christina Bakoyannis

Fig.1

What Goes Into The Making Of A Memorable Online Experience? The Middle School students’ participation @ the Athens Science Virtual Festival through an ACS Athens Live Stream

by Spyros Arsenikos and Christina Bakoyannis, Middle School Faculty

The eye-opening experience of looking at slides under a digital microscope, to experiencing the wonders of chemistry at home, to measuring calories using a can, were some of the highlights from the Athens Science Festival experience that our middle school students took part in on March 29th, 2021.

This year’s Athens Science Virtual Festival was titled “An Era of Heroes” and took place online March 27-29, 2021. The Athens Science Festival is one of the largest festivals in Greece that is organized every year and includes participation of academia, research, educational institutions and schools.

The three middle school workshops were:

◉ Microscopic monsters (Fig. 1)

◉ Experience the chemistry feeling (Fig. 2)

◉ Food Mythbusters (Fig. 3)

Fig.2

Fig.3

Thirty-eight middle school students participated, contributing either by being a narrator, script writer or experimenter. Students met with their mentors in numerous online meetings in order to plan, practice, perform and record their assigned experiments. On the day of the event, a combination of live narration and recorded videos of the experiments was used. The outcome was an astonishing 1½ hour presentation. The live streamed event can be found on the ACS Athens YouTube channel.

The student reflections below bring forth some important aspects of what makes something memorable, while Figures 5-7 give us a glimpse of the presentations. As mentors during this process, we were filled with joy while reading these reflections (Fig. 4). We are looking forward to developing students’ participation again next year, as 97% stated they will certainly do it again, along with enthusiastic feedback such as, “I truly loved it. It was a lot of fun.” and “I had an amazing time!”

Student reflections

Building our love for science: “I felt a sense of inclusion in something special when I entered. I had a fun time with a few classmates and friends who all had one thing in common, the love for science. I got to write what I am so gratefully passionate about in this beautiful place. And the streaming was an experience that made me feel recognised, in a more global spotlight than usual.”

Building our community: “I loved this whole experience. I felt a part of a community that shares the same interests as I do. I also felt recognised as I entered a youtube livestream for the first time.”

“I had goosebumps when watching and it was quite emotional watching other classmates and being part of a team.”

Script writers, narrators and experimenters weave together the experience:

“I was an experimenter and I loved doing the experiments. They were very fun but very impressive and fascinating at the same time. I really enjoyed watching my video on youtube while the narrators explained what had happened.”

“As a script writer I really enjoyed writing the script and seeing it live, I think it was a wonderful project.”

Love and learning go together: “From putting together my script, to practicing, to actually narrating live on that day, everything was super enjoyable! I really love science and learning new things, and this was definitely a really great experience. Plus, I got some takeaways such as learning how to use Zoom and practicing how to speak in front of an audience.” Science can change the lockdown routine: “I enjoyed that I was part of the science festival. It made me feel like I was there in the physical festival. I liked the experience and it took me out of my usual lockdown routine for once.”

Student participants: Grade 6: Charalampos Antypas, Xinzhou Chen, Eric Costopoulos, Tamsin Davison, Jovan Habib, Lyu Haoming, Kalliopi Iliadaki, George Karatzas, Ellie Koutsolioutsou, Serafim Kulukundis, Alex Macris, Nefeli Martsaki, Konstantinos Panagiotakos, Selin Ucan, Nefeli Venetsanou

Grade 7: Ioannis Apostolopoulos, Paschalis Bala, Vasiliki Drakou, Konstantinos Drakoulis, Tasos Giannakitsas, Elly Gerontikos, Dimitri Hatzikos, Vasileia Lalaki, Phaedra Macdonald, Philippos Mavroleon, Vasiliki Mihailidi, Nora Myers, Satakshi Sharma, Eirini Sidereas, Alexia Terezaki, Margarita Vryoni, Kai Yuet Zhang

Grade 8: Angelos Kollilekas, Iliana Lyssaios, Alexandros Maheras, Leticia Malomyti-Markou, Fanny Mikropandremenou, Elena Xanthopoulou

Teacher mentors sharing their enthusiasm for science

Alex performs his yeast experiment at home while Isabella narrates the process for the Microscopic Monsters Workshop