Abstract:
The dynamic development of science in the last decade, resulting from the wide spread of information technologies, poses new challenges to the modern educational paradigm. The creation of joint projects involving schools, on the one hand, and universities and research institutes, on the other, provides direct access for teachers and students to scientific achievements. The National Strategy of Scientific Research envisages the establishment of a sustainable connection between education and science and business, as a basis for the development of a knowledge-based economy. The geographical educational portal „Science in the classroom“ is oriented towards the creation of an interactive map of Bulgaria which has not been created so far, nor has it been published on the Internet, and will be easily accessible without the need to install additional specialized GIS software. The interactive map will be applicable in each of the lessons, replacing a wide range of specialized thematic maps, which, for a number of reasons, are missing from the current geography and economics lessons, while at the same time are an inalienable attribute of geographical education. The interactive map is designed to provide quick access to various geographical information about the components of the natural environment, the demographic and economic processes, and their temporal and spatial development. This enables students to observe the dynamics of geographical processes in the country, and to make projections of their future development. The entry of science into the classroom also provides benefits to geographical science itself. How will the student contribute? – the portal envisages students to be involved in the process of collecting and adding attributive information about their local area of residence to the interactive map. In this way, students will get involved in cognitive activity and thus experience the sense of discovery as an interesting and useful model of human behavior, giving them confidence as researchers. The portal envisages that students collect a database of natural objects which have not been classified by science so far, and locate them on the interactive map during the study of their local area of residence. After an additional inspection, that database will become part of the geographical database of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), and thus save a lot of scientific time and significant financial resources. The interactive map will be linked to the specially created geographical educational portal „Science in the classroom“, which will be virtually linked to the site of the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography at the BAS. Another module of the geographical educational portal, under the general name „My research“, aims to introduce geography into the classroom and meet the need of the teaching community for up-to-date scientific geographical information. This module substantiates the research, educational and cognitive activity of the students from a methodological, technological and didactic point of view. The module provides a valuable educational resource to the teacher of geography and economics, for conducting and optimizing activity lessons, which are largely neglected due to their insufficient scientific and didactic provision. The described research practices are accompanied by demonstration videos, specially created for the purpose. The research modules can be used in the lessons for students majoring in geography, so as to take the learning process out of the classroom and integrate it with other related subjects. The educational portal will shorten the distance between the latest geographical research, teachers of geography and economics, and students studying this subject.