Many schools teach students theory as well as practice, or experimentation, in science classes. But, students rarely perform experiments unless they are necessary for their courses of study. Because of this, many students regard science as a boring and hard subject.  To counteract this trend, a program has been developed to help students overcome their distaste or fear of science and learn to approach it easily through various science experiments. It is called the 'Science Festival.'

The Science Festival was held from May 14-15 in the Department of Science Education, College of Education. It helped students -from JNU primary, middle and high schools- understand and experience the principles of science easily. "Science is not that boring and difficult," said junior Ko Ho-jun, the student leader of the Department of Science Education, who met with the Islander following the successful completion of this year’s Science Festival.

1. Please introduce the Science Festival.

The Science Festival is held every second week of May after  midterm examination. This year’s event was titled 'Telescope and Microscope.' We didn't prepare a separate venue for the festival but we used our laboratory room by decorating the room suitably. Usually a lot of elementary, middle, and high school students come to the festival, and occasionally preschool students are accompanied by their parents.

All age groups can take part in the festival but we set a limit on directly experiencing experiments because of safety concerns. For example, we organized an experiment for making a fire on hands, but we only gave the opportunity to do the experiment to middle school students.

The festival was mostly divided into two parts: life biology and physical science. For life biology, we had two themes, plants and ecology. For physical science, we divided the activities according to whether they were based on chemistry, astronomy, or physics. Through this classification, students could not only conduct experiments but also understand the theories behind them.

2. How do you prepare for the Science Festival?

To prepare for the science festival, we, the Department of Science Education, decide on a theme for science experiments during the winter vacation. Then we find experiment topics that are suitable to the themes. Then, we elect a student to be in charge of each theme, and we get these leaders to submit relevant plans. After finishing midterms, we spend almost all our spare time preparing the festival and conducting pre-experiments.

We visit the Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Office of Education and make posters and pamphlets for the promotion. It is a difficult task for all of the department students to go around and get sponsors for the festival. Through All processes, students can get united each other. Also, despite what we suffer, the rewards are well worth it, especially when many students visit our festival and experience and learn various things.

3. Do you participate in other science festivals?

During the science festival, many organizations help us. One of them is the 'Jeju Youth Science Exploration Club'. It is mainly operated by science teachers in Jeju. This club organized another science festival in June of this year titled the '2010 Jeju Science Festival'. At this festival, we set up several booths and conducted the most successful experiments based on our previous festivals. In addition, we served as helpers for the activities in its 'Youth Science Camp'.

The Department of Science Education holds a science festival annually in order to induce an interest in science from many students. They help many students carry out experiments in person and explain underlying theories. Going through this kind of festival I believe that the Department of Science Education can help science teachers teach students in a funny and useful basis and I expect that this festival helps grow talented people who are dreaming of being the next generation of Einsteins.