Orchidea Science Fair 2026

By arany.barna.dora Articles, Esemény, News STEAM, STEM, stemhungary, stemorientation Comments Off

The Science Fair, held on April 22, was dedicated to science and innovation at the Orchidea Hungarian-English Bilingual Primary School, where nearly 95 projects were presented by the participating students from grades 3–11. The international character of the event was strengthened by 11 projects from Luxembourg, as well as a visiting group from Austria. A special feature of the professional program was an out-of-competition presentation by two graduating students, who demonstrated the practical implementation of the project-based physics graduation exam to the participants.

Contribution of the STEAM Office – Hungarian STEAM Platform

As a prominent professional partner of the event, the STEAM Office – Hungarian STEAM Platform took an active role in enriching the program. Attila Fodor, project coordinator of the STEAM Office, together with Dávid Baráz, an employee of ÓE Nonprofit Kft., held a total of six interactive workshops throughout the day – two in Hungarian and four in English – demonstrating the possibilities of combining modern educational methodologies with technological innovation.

The central element of the presentation titled “Gamification in the Interdisciplinary Educational Competence Model – A spectrum from technological creation to social impact” was the introduction of the TE-STEM-STEAM-STREAM-STREAMS pyramid model, which, alongside technological and scientific competencies, places a strong emphasis on the role of the arts, rhetoric, as well as social sciences and humanities. The presentation highlighted that understanding modern technological systems is not merely an engineering or mathematical question, but a process to be interpreted from both communicative and social perspectives.

During the presentation, the operational model of GPT-based artificial intelligence was also introduced as an example: how a large language model is built from mathematical and transformer-based principles, how it becomes an engineering and technological product, what role visual and user representation plays in usability, and how the issues of rhetoric and human-machine communication appear in everyday application. The lecture also covered the broad social impacts that such technologies have on education, knowledge sharing, and solving the problems of our daily lives.

The Minecraft-based SteamCraft and Steamdustry projects, which demonstrated the relationship between gamification and educational technology, also received a prominent role. Participants gained insight into how a playful environment can be used to develop an engineering mindset, problem-solving thinking, and interdisciplinary competencies. Furthermore, the “recreational learning” research direction was also presented here, which examines how casual gaming and other forms of active recreation can deepen students’ knowledge in a specific subject area without learning appearing to them as a compulsory and uncomfortable activity in the traditional sense.

In addition, teachers and students received information about the programs and opportunities of the upcoming Summer Children’s University camps.

Professional program and accompanying events

During the judging process in the morning hours, experts evaluated the students’ work, while the afternoon was dedicated to workshops and interactive programs. Alongside Attila Fodor’s presentations, Dr. Kristóf Fenyvesi, a researcher at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research of the University of Jyväskylä and founder of Experience Workshop —whose fields of expertise include interdisciplinary learning (STEM & STEAM) and the connection between mathematics and art—held a creative workshop for Orchidea students in the library, and then spoke about the relationship between the Finnish educational model and the STEAM approach in his plenary lecture.

The event concluded with a formal announcement of results and an awards ceremony, where the most outstanding projects received recognition. The Science Fair proved once again that the STEAM approach is not only inspiring but also an effectively applicable approach in the daily work of students and educators.