Get excited about programming with EU Code Week! 

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“EU Code Week is a grass-roots movement that celebrates creativity, problem solving and collaboration through programming and other tech activities. The idea is to make programming more visible, to show young, adults and elderly how you bring ideas to life with code, to demystify these skills and bring motivated people together to learn.” https://codeweek.eu/about 

The Innokas network, together with the Finnish National Agency for Education, challenged teachers, schools and educational institutions to get excited about programming and computational thinking in Finland! We hosted exciting and versatile distance learning lessons for students of different ages, from preschool to middle school. Schools were also invited to organize their own coding event with their students and to add their event to the EUCodeWeek.eu -page.  

In October 2023, nearly 15000 students and their teachers registered to participate in nine distance lessons with the topics ranging from coding games, to programming without devices, to artificial intelligence. It was truly an engaging and innovative way to get excited about programming and learn together! 

On the EU’s Code Week website, you can find tips, materials and courses for implementing events, as well as the English-language social media channels maintained by the European Commission, where you can follow the activities of the code week throughout the year. 

Guests from Beijing at last! 

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好久不见! , ”Long time, no see!” is a Chinese phrase for not seeing someone for a while. This is what I and my Chinese guests said to each other when we met on this May. 

The Global Education Community (GEC) and Global Innokas Network has given me many opportunities to meet new people around the world. During our trips to China we have for example met Joan, a journalist of Education. On this spring she came to Helsinki with Wang Xiaofeng (a principal in a rural school near Beijing) and Hongdi (a voluntary teacher in Beijing area). They all wanted to visit Nuuksio National Park and our school – both visits went well! 

On Sunday the 21st we wandered in Nuuksio National Park and I told my visitors about Finnish Nature and the Nature School of Haltia. My visitors were amazed how important role the Nature has in Finnish everyday life. We also visited Haltia’s exhibitions where Joan, Xiaofeng and Hongdi were able to learn how animals survive during wintertime or how bear or birds live. After that we came to my house to talk and to have dinner together. 

On Tuesday the 23rd my guests came to visit our school. They were impressed how well organized everything is and how much is going on all the time. Joan, Hongdi and Xiaofeng followed me and my students (4th and 9th graders) to Riistavuori Senior House where my students performed their poems to seniors and where seniors performed their poems to my students. My Chinese guests wondered, how come we are having this sort of cooperation. Well, the idea comes from our National Curriculum, doesn’t it! 

I hope I see my Chinese colleagues in a future, either here in Finland or in China! 

A Visit to Riistavuori Senior House
Joan and me
My Chinese colleague making an interview

Raini Sipilä, Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu 

On the road to innovation

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We had the opportunity to visit the Maker Faire event in Orlando, Florida in November 2019, to discover the latest in maker-activities. It was interesting to see how maker-activities were realized overseas! The event was characterized by a strong sense of community where families and people of all ages both participated and presented their own innovations and crafts. We had the possibility to meet with local organizers and networkers and discussed how this great event was organized with voluntary efforts and local flavors.

The range of activities was wide ranging from simple art and textile craft to Robot Ruckus fighting robots. Both traditional making and novel technologies were presented side by side with great pride and joy in making! Faire visitors were greeted by a drumming band and could easily spend the whole day discovering and doing together with family and friends. We got many great ideas to take home from the overall atmosphere and presentation, working together as a community to single maker-ideas!

Laura Salo, Asta Ansolahti & Tiina Korhonen

Innokas Network

EU CODE WEEK @ Jalavapuisto school, Espoo

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I decided to build most of this years EU Code Week events in our school around the Cody Color -game that the Italians introduced to me in the EU Code Week summer school where 25 leading teachers got together to network and learn new things. Thank you Italy!

I started by cutting sheets of paper about 30 cm x 30 cm and introducing the rules to the game to my own class. The instructions you can find here: Color challenge. It’s never too late to try! The kids really loved it.

We spread around the hallways to play. We practiced on a 4 x 4 grid although we later tried on a much bigger one. This grid was excellent for 2 kids but even 4-5 could fit, as long as they knew their steps.

After my class learned the game well we sent invitations to teachers in our school to book us on Code week to come and teach it to their classes. We got many invitations and spent many hours on week 41 teaching other children in our school. On one particular lesson we had 10 spots in the gym for anyone to come and try. For first time users a good hint is to draw a small red dot on the back of your right hand and a yellow one on the left hand. Makes turning the right way a lot easier.

At the end of that class my class tried out the massive 12 x 13 grid with 24 children at the same time! It was super fun but the grid being so big you could only figure out your path so far and some of the success was pure luck.

We also tried the Battle Royale on the website to prepare us for the night school and beating all the parents. After playing on the floor the kids got a hang of the website game really quickly.

On Thursday the 10th of October we had a coding night school. The kids came back to school at 5 o’clock with a lot of parents who had accepted our code challenge. We started with about 50-60 people on the Battle Royale. Everything worked really smoothly. The parents got super excited too! But as hard as they tried they couldn’t beat the kids -some came close 🙂

On the same evening we also tested the code.org website and their Hour of code activities. We got quite a few diplomas printed for completing it!

And we also had time for doing the pixel art posted to EU Code Week teachers group in Facebook by Catherine Swain. Thank you for the fun idea!

But no night school would be fun without pizzas, playing tag on the dark hallways of the school and sleeping altogether on the gym floor. We’ll do all this again next year!

And this excellent 4K class has well deserved their certificates of recognition for contributing to the success of EU Code Week 2019. Good job!

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EU Code Week Ambassadors and Edu Coordinators meeting 4.-5.9.2019

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I had the privilege of attending EU Code Week Ambassadors and Edu Coordinators meeting in Brussels on September 4.-5. on behalf of Finland’s Ambassadors and Edu Coordinators. The two days were full of networking, key speakers and planning. I also introduced Innokas network as one of Finland’s best practices on the field of coding and innovations.

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On the first day we heard from Nadia Aime and her personal story on how it has lead her to work toward bringing equality in coding for all. We also heard about the Code Week pilot Summer school. You can read more about the summer school in my blog here.

Then it was time for best practises. I introduced the Innokas network, it’s story and all the things we do. You can read more about the Innokas network here. Other best practises came from Poland, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania and Austria. They covered topics like computational thinking, tips and tricks for engaging code week and connecting the national digital education with the code week website. Day one was finished with a networking dinner.

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On Thursday we got to see a sneak peek at the new redesigned EU code Week website. It should be out any day now, so keep a look out for the orange! We also got to hear three interesting presentations.

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Claire Sears from the British Council told us about their work on training all the teachers in the Western Balkans. She also introduced the online courses they have for all teachers. 

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Loubna Azghoud from the Women in Tech Festival presented us with their Code festival for 2019. The subject this year is Code & Fly to the moon. Read more about it on their site starting September 9th. 

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Deidre Hodson from DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture introduced the SELFIE. It’s a free, easy to use tool to help schools find out where the students and teachers are in regards of digital learning and digital competences.

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The Innovative school model by Innokas and the holistic approach on embedding technology in teaching and learning introduced by SELFIE and european Commission have a lot in common in my opinion.

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We also worked on brainstorming for the Code Week vision of the future and mind mapped for the actions of Code Week 2019. The countdown is on! 26 days and counting!

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Anu Kahri,
EU Code Week Leading teacher in Finland
Classroom teacher, Jalavapuisto school, Espoo, Finland
Innokas-trainer

EU CODE WEEK summer school 2019

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I had a great opportunity this summer to participate in Brussels in the first ever EU Code Week Pilot Summer school! 25 EU Code week Leading teachers from 16 different countries were welcomed on Tuesday the 9th of July by Commissioner Maryia Gabriel. Her goal is to get 50% of all schools in the EU area to participate in EU Code Week by 2020. That leads us straight to the Leading teachers’ goal of building a stronger network and spreading the idea that Code Week is for everybody. 

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On the second day of EU Code Week Pilot Summer school we worked on parallel workshops. It was hard to choose, because you only had time to participate in 2 of the 4. There was workshops on tinkering and making, robotics and makeblocks, micro:bit, visual programming and, game design. During the workshops we talked about developing technologic and information literacy and, competences like problem solving, creativity and collaboration. 

My favorite workshop was working with Pocket Code. With Pocket Code you can create, play and share games and animations that you develop with your phone or tablet. It was super easy and fun! 

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In the afternoon we worked with Computer Science Fundamentals and the code.org curriculum in particular. 

Day 3 of the EU Code Week Summer School focused on building a MOOC together. We started by listing advantages and finding solutions for existing challenges on the following topics: 

  •  Visual programming 
  • Robotics 
  • Tinkering 
  • Unplugged activities 
  • Coding with all subjects 

On day 3 we also got to play a royal battle on CodyColor which was introduced to us by Leading teacher Stefania Altieri. The aim on the game is to keep your robot moving on the platform as long as possible. You have a 4 X 4 grid and you can choose where your robot “walks in to the grid” but after that the moves are pre-determined by the colors in the squares. It was a super fun game that I will definately play with my kids at school. As an unplugged first, so that they learn the directions and then the actual battle.  

On Day 3 we also got to visit the House of European History museum. The museum aims to become the leading museum about transnational phenomena which have shaped our continent. The museum explores the historical memories, diverse experiences and common ground of the people of Europe and how these relate to present day. It was a very interesting and interactive guided tour via a tablet and I got to experience it in Finnish! The House of European History can be experienced in all 24 EU official languages. 

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On day 4 – our last day – we learned how to organize a hackathon but mainly focused on the future. We worked on our action plans for the coming EU Code Week. Many different ideas and many different ways on how to put these ideas into practice were shared. It is very important to share and to create a network. We recieved our diplomas for the good work we’d done during the week and said farewells to all new friends near and far, knowing that a new network is supporting us from now on.  

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Do you want to learn more? Watch the video and sign up for the MOOC!

EU Code Week – Deep Dive MOOC

 

Anu Kahri 

EU Code Week Leading teacher in Finland 

Classroom teacher, Jalavapuisto school, Espoo, Finland 

Innokas-trainer 

 

PS. Brussels is known for it’s Manneken pis but did you know that it has inspired two other statues… The Jeanneke Pis and the Het Zinneke. Make sure to find all three if you ever visit the city 🙂

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Visit to Marymount School of New York

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I had an opportunity to visit Marymount School of New York on my last day in US. Marymount School of New York is an independent, Catholic day school for girls. The motto of the school is: Challenge yourself to grow in heart and mind – who wouldn’t agree with that. School has 760 students from 3-years-old to 18-year-old. Class sizes are small, only 16-17 students in one group. The school promotes development of the lifelong skills of critical thinking and problem solving. One school year costs 15 000$, but even though the costs are high, there are more applicants to school than the school can take.

Marymount School is known from its three Maker Spaces. Spaces are perfectly organized, there is plenty of stuff to play, create, design, build – innovate either alone or with peer or with group. One educator is responsible for all the equipment set in shelves, tables and lockers; educator is present at Maker Space all day long to help students if they have problems. I truly fell in love with this enthusiasm and creativity. Students are fostered to making culture. I saw beautiful combination of Art pieces and Technology, I look up to teachers’ innovative mind sets. STEAM in action!

Students work with iPADs or MacBook Airs in a 1:1 environment; Marymount School is an Apple Distinguished School. The school works with organizations like Metropolitan Museum of Art and DNA Learning Center Manhattan. School has even two classrooms at MET, and Art teachers from both the museum and from the school teach students. I found this very inspiring: school community broadens to another community, wau! ‘Dream it. Design it. Make it.’ says school’s webpage. No wonder the Marymount School of New York is one of the best in whole USA.

Mr Don Buckley, who hosted me during my visit, is an educator and designer. It was good to have somebody taking care of me, because the school building was so big, divided into many floors and sections. The oldest part of the school building is from turn-of-the-century, a beautiful building with crystal chandeliers and wall-to-wall-carpets. The school was established in 1926 by Mother Marie Joseph Butler. The second building, the enlargement, is from 1984. Nowadays the school needs more space, and a new school building will be build in next two years. The budget for 10-floor school building in Harlem is around 100 000 000$. Just for comparison, the most expensive school building, Opinmäki comprehensive school in Espoo, cost 52 million euros on 2015. Mr Buckley is responsible for taking teachers’ ideas and opinions to architectures, it is a co-design project with staff, engineers and architectures. This reminds me of participatory design, a co-design model I have worked with here in Finland .

Marymount School has different sorts of libraries for students at different ages. Small children’s library is a small cozy place with one, huge armchair in the middle of the room. The library for upper secondary school students is a silent place for reading and individual working. Librarian said, it is important to have a silent room in a city like New York. For groupwork, there are many open working spaces around the buildings, students are free to choose their place of work.

Compared to Finland teachers’ don’t have to obtain Master degree from the University. Teachers negotiate their own salaries, the salary rate is from 60 000$ to 120 000$ / year depending on how effective and capable teacher is. Marymount School provides its teachers a health insurance, retirement advisory and a hot, daily lunch. And, two teachers mentioned to me, a 10 week vacation in summer is a fine priviledge to have.

I learned so much during my visit, that I hope next week when I’ll host two teachers from Marymount school in my school, they would have as good experience as I had.

Raini sipilä

Growing mind and understanding in FabLearn 2019 –conference at Columbia University, New York

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The 8th Annual FabLearn flagship conference on Maker Education took place at Columbia University, New York on 9th – 10th March. The conference theme What Role does Maker Education Play in a World with Growing Social and Environmental Challenges attracted over 400 educators, stakeholders and researchers from 23 different countries to participate in inspiring lectures, workshops and poster sessions. From Finland there were three Innokas Network presentations: one poster in Educator track (by Raini Sipilä, Kati Sormunen and Tiina Korhonen), one student poster (by Matias Ola, Sini Riikonen, Tiina Korhonen and Kati Sormunen) and one short paper (by Tiina Korhonen, Laura Salo and Kati Sormunen).

Columbia University is one of the oldest universities in US, established in 1754. It is also a former university of John Dewey whose idea of learning by doing doesn’t get old. During the conference the audience was challenged to ask themselves questions about ‘who is making?’ and ‘why making?’.

Keynote speaker Sylvia Martinez highlighted the word ‘making’ from different angles. Interesting part was her prediction on Future: biotech is the new digital – we will move forward from cyberphysical to cyberbiological future. Martinez also emphasized sharing as the best way to ensure understanding. She encouraged teachers to empower their students to understand their capability to control machines and therefore affect to their own future.

Amanda Cox, the second keynote speaker, came from The New York Times. Cox is a data editor and she is responsible for both written and visual content in NYT. Ms Cox spoke about scale, context, patterns and annotation levels and how these are shown in digital way. In digital newspaper settings are able to create interactively: the reader is able to affect how or what she/he sees and reads. Amanda Cox said, it is important to transform data into a form in which it is more understandable – for example data is put into familiar environment.

Panels on both Saturday and Sunday were more or less representatives’ presentations on their projects. All discussion topics were related with making somehow: Making in an age of social unrest, Making without destroying the planet: is it possible?, Making for film and theatre and Making around the world: Experiences and lessons learned. For me the most fruitful panel was the last one: educators from six different countries shared their experience on maker culture on their own country.

Significantly important notice is, that nobody works alone. Everything is made in collaboration with other people. Short and full papers were written together, young makers and educators had worked with teams to get their presentations to the conference. My visit with Innokas Network experts was amazing. My mind and understanding grew because of the conversations I had with all kinds of people. People who seemed to be as interested in making and designing as I am.

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Raini Sipilä

Erasmus 3T – Collaborating in Bedford 

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This time teachers and school developers from Denmark and Finland gathered in Bedford for a week in October. The week was full of different school visits, great conversations about the English educational system and observation of the three T’s (time, talent and technology (and trust)).  

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Our visit to England started with a reunion in a local restaurant. After a fun evening together it was time to start the activities. On the first day we had a chance to visit the University of Bedfordshire. It was very interesting to hear about the English school system. We spent the next days in different schools where participants got to know the school, observe lessons and even teach microlessons. The last day of the week provided again an opportunity for each delegation to present their thoughts and reflections to each other and discuss together.  

When discussing technology we found similar things that came up in both Finnish and Danish reflections. For us technology education in England seems like a separate entity from other education. This led to discussions about how to integrate technology in schools in order that it would be helpful and useful in pedagogical way.  

Reflections on talent included discussions on grouping of pupils and ranking. One big topic was also trust. We noticed that headmasters trust their teachers but the lack of trust is evident from the government’s side and that leads to ongoing testing and registrations.  

In a time perspective we talked about structured lessons and classrooms. Everything seemed to be very structured and that was one thing that was different from Finnish schools where we don’t have strict schedules and pupils may have just one or two tasks per lesson. Overall our visit to Bedford was great and we learned a lot about the English perspective to education and at the same time gained new insight into our own system. 

Asta Ansolahti and Kati Sormunen / The Innokas Network 
 

Erasmus 3T – Collaborating in Helsinki

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Teachers and school developers from Denmark and Great Britain gathered in Helsinki for a September week full of immersion in the Finnish educational system and observation of the three T’s (time, talent and technology). We welcomed new participants and had a warm reunion with those who have been a part of the project for longer. The week started off with a welcome session that, true to Finnish tradition, included sauna and swimming. The following two days were spent in two schools where participants got to know the school, observe lessons and even teach Finnish students. The afternoon time was spent reflecting and finding those transferable ideas that one could take home. One day was dedicated to familiarizing with the educational system and the work of the Innokas Network which supports schools in developing 21st century skills through the innovative use of technology. Participants also immersed in gaming when they were introduced to and competed in the pedagogically relevant Seppo-game and discussed how to use gamefulness in education. The last day of the week provided an opportunity for each delegation to present their thoughts and reflections to each other and discuss together while enjoying a traditional cinnamon roll.

Reflections on technology included discussion on the pedagogical use of technological tools. Technology was seen to motivate students and participants observed that the tools for these activities are in place and available in Finnish schools.  Talent was discussed for one with reference to supporting talented students which is an area that needs development in the Finnish system. Currently most emphasis is placed on the support of students with special needs. Time was approached from both the students and the teachers perspective. Short school days and lesser control were discussed and an observation was made that Finnish students still seem to have clear boundaries and guidelines within which to work autonomously. Differences in teachers’ working hours got the participants thinking about the pro’s and con’s of varying work day models. On one hand the freedom to leave work after teaching was valued and on the other hand set working hours would secure more joint planning time and possibilities for collaboration.

Laura Salo, Kati Sormunen and Asta Ansolahti / The Innokas Network