On the 17th September 2019, at Esplora Interactive Science Centre over 500 teachers from Public, Private, Church and Independent Schools were VIPs to a free exclusive fun-night. This has become an annual event whereby Esplora disseminates its Education Programme for the forthcoming scholastic year 2019 – 2020. 

During the evening teachers had the opportunity to try out over 200 hands-on exhibits, ask questions and queries to the Esplora Team and also try out snippets/teasers of the hands-on workshops, Planetarium Shows and Science Shows on offer so as to be better abled to decide what Educational Outputs their students would benefit from the most. 

A fun evening with no sit down presentations or talks, where teachers felt at ease to ask questions and placed preliminary bookings for their schools. Teachers are among one of Esplora’s main and important stakeholders.

In particular, the Executive Chairman of the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST), which falls under the Parliamentary Secretariat for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation, had words of praise to all the teachers present. He thanked them for their support for the last three years. He said that at Esplora “we are putting all our efforts to showcase science as engaging in order to gain increasing interest and participation amongst our visitors. We do this through the endless efforts of our science communication team together with the educators of our country.” He also thanked the collaborators which Esplora works with throughout the year to be able to have such an abundant programme. 

The Education Programme is an aid whereby teachers can find all the information needed to plan and book a visit to the Science Centre. The Esplora Education Programme caters for Early Years, Early Primary, Late Primary, Middle School and Secondary School students. Further and Higher Education students can also have tailor-made interactive visits to them.

The popular thematic events such as Halloween, Superheroes in Science, Christmas at Esplora and Kuluri Karnival have kept their place. The much loved Toi Toi performances produced by Teatru Manoel in collaboration with Esplora have returned, whereby the Little Esploras will be able to enjoy science theatre.

This year the programme features a section which is dedicated to the National STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Careers Expo aimed at Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 students. This initiative together with the University of Malta, The Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology, the National School Support Services within the Ministry for Education and Employment  and a number of industry partners will be held in January 2020 at Esplora. The Late Primary students will not only get a change to meet professionals working with the STEM fields, but will also be engaged in a number of hands-on activities to shine a light on the knowledge, skills and competences needed for particular jobs.

A Canvas Painting which was created during the Moon Landing 50th anniversary event last July was inaugurated by MCSTs Executive Chairman, Dr. Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. The painting, which was created together with SpaceLab, will be permanently exhibited at Esplora featuring more than 100 Footprints of real visitors that had attended for the event. 

Throughout the evening, teachers and their guest enjoyed a BBQ at the beautiful chilled setting of the Belvedere while listening to the live tunes of a local band The Alchemists.