Oksana Okulova

Location: Ivano-Frankove, Lviv oblast

School: “Ivano-Frankove Secondary School named after Ivan Franko of grades I-III” of Yavoriv District Council of Lviv Region

Subject: Chemistry

Why did you become a teacher?

I always wanted to do science, but when I graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, it turned out that scientists are not needed. I was lucky to find a teacher’s place in my home school. A year later, I realized that this is a matter of my life, and science can be done with students.

Innovations

I run a blog with my students, where we share our research. For example, for the rubric “Interesting experiments from the pharmacy” children search the Internet for various experiments with available drugs, and then in the lessons we conduct experiments.

To memorize chemical elements, students create maps in Microsoft’s Flashcards programme, master scribing, and even use the game “Minecraft” to create models of molecules. The first attempts to model chemical processes were made in the programme for creating games “KoduGameLab”. We also launched a project on the crowdfunding platform GoFundEd and bought tablets for the chemistry classroom.

Rule of life

Learning is not just a transfer of knowledge, it is a way to expand consciousness and change reality.