At last Global Innokas -meeting teachers from different parts of Finland gathered together, had great conservations but also built mental bridges together. The idea of ‘Our Neighbour School’ started to grow in teachers’ minds: we decide to connect our classes here in Finland by FaceTime and Skype. We didn’t tell our pupils what part of Finland we were going to connect them; they had an opportunity to make up some questions to find out the city where the other class was.

So during past couple of weeks pupils in Helsinki have been searching Finland. Boys and girls have made little presentations about Helsinki and we will send them to both Oulu and Hankasalmi. Today we saw a wonderful trailer made by Hankasalmi teachers and pupils!

We had difficulties with Skype: weather we saw only picture or just heard voices. We’ll try again! But FaceTime worked fantasticly. Pupils in Helsinki were really exited to talk with pupils from Hankasalmi. This work will continue!

– Raini, SYK

Metsokangas Comprehensive School, Oulu, Finland, and Jefferson Elementary School, Janesville, USA, have been collaborating for a year. During this collaborative project students have got pen pals, made a presentation video of their schools, sent Christmas Greetings videos, had a Skype chats on their spare time and also they have started to make a common video about similarities and differences between their cultures and students’ everyday life.

And all this will continue. Keep on waiting for the next step. 🙂

BR,

Minna, Petri and Jaana + 80 students from Metsokangas Comprehensive School