Stars and STEM Stories
GLOBE Students and Teachers from Seven Countries Attend
GLOBE students from around the world took part in SciFest 2008 Finland from 16-19 April, in the city of Joensuu. SciFest Finland is an annual festival of science, environment and technology aimed at middle and high school students. It features hands-on activities, popular lectures, games, workshops, robotics competitions and interactive exhibitions as well as workshops for teachers. This year, about 7,000 visitors from 50 countries participated in SciFest Finland. Environmental themes were Forests and Climate Change. GLOBE teachers and students from Argentina, Croatia, Finland, Macedonia, Netherlands, Turkey and Uganda joined in.
This year, SciFest Finland was planned as a sister event to SciFest Africa, held concurrently in Grahamstown, South Africa. The collaboration, called Joensuu Way 2008, connected participants from both events via the internet and included activities such as a real-time tug of war on the world's longest (virtual) rope 9,000 km long!
One of the main organizers for SciFest 2008 was ENO-Environment Online, a global virtual school for sustainable development. ENO receives funding from the National Board of Education and municipalities in the Joensuu region.
The next SciFest Finland will be held in April 2009. The theme, Astronomy, will be linked to theInternational Year of Astronomy 2009, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope to study the skies, and helping citizens of the world use observations of the day- and night-time sky to rediscover their place in the Universe. Participants in SciFest 2009 are welcome to join in preparatory activities starting soon; a global tree-planting day is planned as well as an event similar to GLOBE at Night which will take place surrounding the autumnal equinox, occurring on 22 September 2008. Online activities will be ongoing, leading up to the actual SciFest event in Finland in April 2009. GLOBE schools are invited to take part!
More information about SciFest 2009, contact Mr. Mika Vanhanen of ENO-Environment Online.
13 May 2008