National Board of Education organized global collaboration seminar 25.-26.11.2015 in Tampere, Finland. Global Innokas participants Petri and Jaana from Metsokangas Comprehensive School, Oulu, took part in this seminar.

During the first day we heard an interesting presentation about teacher and student exchange programs. Via exchange programs teachers and students could have shorter and longer exchange periods in Scandinavia and Europe.

Speakers also told us why it’s important for schools to have international connections and offer their students international co-operation and friendship during the school years. The main idea was: the more contacts you have during your studying in the primary and secondary schools, the more courage you will have to use your language skills. This motivates you to study languages. Also the different cultures become more familiar and you get friends from different countries.

In one of the workshops we also got to know about a co-operative project between school from Finland and Africa. They had f. ex. made a photo book of children’s every day lives in Finland and Africa. Actually, the idea was almost the same than we are going to do with our students’ penpals from Janesville, USA. The world is so small and ideas so similar between teachers.

One of the main topics during both days were refugees and how we can take them into consideration in the school. We also talked a lot of multi-cultural and school environment and how we could give students and teachers from diffirent cultures a possibility to share their knowledge about their own culture with other students and teachers. Many of speakers emphasised the value of meeting refugees. If they come to schools as visitors, it would be great way to learn from their countries and would also dispel preconceptions.

On the other day we got a new point of view after participating the workshop under the topic ”Education of peace”. This presentation waked us up to notice that how important is to support every student to reach their own target – they don’t have to have similar target’s or way’s to reach their targets, because they are individuals and teachers role is to find the best way with the student, not on behalf of the student.

Last but not least we got a task to write down our ideas of global education in groups of four. In our group we thought that global education should be

• an encouraging possibility to meet people all over the world
• broad-minded, curious and equal collaboration between people from different countries
• a way to make people understand what kind of changes Finnish School and Labour Market will face in a near future
• a way to understand what kind of benefits multicultural environment will give all people in Finland and abroad
• a way to notice that the word ”we Finnish people” mean all people in Finland, not only people who look Finnish or speak the same language, but also people who live and work here and feel the Finnish beat in their hearts

 

Jaana and Petri from Metsokangas Comprehensive School, Oulu, Finland

I had the privilege of meeting Jonathan So this Summer in China. We both took part in the Global Educational Summit amongst other teachers from China, Canada, Australia and Canada. Jonathan works as a 6th grade teacher in Ontario Canada and I am a fourth grade teacher in Espoo Finland. We decided to bring our kids together. The theme for this years GEC is “Our school -our neighbors school” and it gives us tons of possibilities working with the kids. From past experience we decided that working together is easier after they had met first. And that’s how it started…

Because of the time difference we decided that I would have night school with my children and Jonathan would have his kids in school normally. My kids got super excited about spending the night in school and had a long wait from August to November 19th. We also had to have the fire department come in and check the premises so that they were safe for sleeping over.

My kids first had a normal day at school and then returned to school at 17.00. The level of excitement was touchable 🙂 At 18.00 we used Skype to contact Jonathan’s class. We had some technical problems in my class -of course- and ended up with 18 children around an iPad trying to see and hear. In the beginning the kids had to try to figure out where the other class was located at. Asking questions like: “Do you speak French?”, “Do you play ice hockey?”, “Is it Germany?” they quite quickly figured out where the other class was at.  Then everyone introduced themselves by telling their name and an interest of theirs. A lot of giggling and laughing and excitement and 1 hour later we were done.

       

“Skype was fun although it was a bit long. But we could talk to other people almost at the other side of the world.”

“The Skype was very nice. We had a mystery class we were talking to but we found out were they live. It was my best day ever with my class.”

Jonathan’s kids went to French class and we went to computer class. I had created an Edmodo group for us before hand. Jonathan had sent us a video of their school. A video the kids had filmed earlier that day. My class watched it and commented and after posted lots of question about school life in Canada. Now we are eagerly waiting for responses.

After Edmodo we took a head start on Hour of Code. code.org  has launched two new coding hour -exercise. One with Minecraft and the other with Star Wars. My class worked intently with which ever one they chose to do.

The night was long and one needs food. Pizza at school was a treat that we seldom have.

And beds than? We slept in the gym. Boys on one half and girls on the other. We made our beds ready and found the gym mattresses handy 🙂

“The pizza was excellent! Unfortunately ate mine very fast. it is very nice to get pizza at night school.”

“You could sleep very well in the gym.”

“I didn’t sleep well but I still loved the night school!”

“Sleeping was booring.”

At 22.00 we were ready for what turned up to be the most exciting thing about night school: A game of police and robbers. The 2 police had flashlights and the robbers each had a reflector of some sort. The school was totally dark and you had permission to run down the dark corridors. Even though we extend the time twice it ended up too soon. I had 19 very sweaty kids on my hands.

“My favorite thing was police and robbers game.”

“I loved the police and robbers game!”

Everyone quieted down quickly and even the teacher slept quite well. In the morning we had a breakfast prepared by our kitchen and got ready to go home as the others were just arriving to school.

“The night school was super duper!”

“The whole night school was super exciting and fun!”

Collaboration with Jonathan and his class has now officially started. Stay tuned to what we do next.

The Robo Project has started at Metsokangas Comprehensive School in Oulu. Our students made wooden game boards by using Google Maps, painted them using six different colours and after that they marked the names of the biggest cities all around the world.

When the game boards were finished, students started to learn programming. A few of them had programmed before, but for the most of them it was the first time to program EV3 Lego Robots. At the beginning they programmed their robots to walk from the city to another. Next time they will start to learn to avoid obstacles and to program robots to turn around.

During this spring our students will create many own playing strategies in groups and design how to play the game by using the robots. They will also make ship outfits for the robots, because robots are moving along waterways from continent to another. Students will also make pawns during this spring. Pawns will look alike pandas.

BR,

Päivi, Jaana, Minna and Petri (and also our 106 eager  students) from Metsokangas Comprehensive School

Best,
Anu and 3K, Jalavapuisto school, Espoo, Finland

Pupils started to write profiles of their senior person. They discussed, how they should write an interview which is at the same time personal, respectful and informative.

When all the profiles were finished teacher read them to pupils in 5A. The stories of senior citizens’ lives were touching and real.

On our second visit to Old people’s home pupils gave profiles they wrote to their senior person. They continued the interview by making more questions about plays seniors played on their childhood. First of all it was good to see how happy seniors were when they had an opportunity to meet 5A’s pupils again. Pupils heard lots of stories, but they also realized that it is hard to remember things which have happened so long ago.

– Raini Sipilä

Innokas Network and the Department of Teacher Education at University of Helsinki had the great pleasure of organizing the Global Educational Community (GEC) Finland conference day on March 6. During the conference day we promoted GEC to the wider audience in Finland, reflected on previous GEC experiences, and built and modeled GEC in practice.

  

During the first session we introduced participants to Global Educational Community background, goals and practice. We also had the opportunity to hear GEC educator and musician Chris Kohn perform his own song “Building Bridges”. GEC leaders Professor Guoli Liang from Wisconsin University and Professor Ann Lieberman from Stanford sent their video greetings, followed by an open mic session between GEC teachers from Australia, USA, China and Finland. GEC teachers learned from each other about the great projects they are doing with students in schools.

Video greetings from professor Guoli Liang

Video greetings from professor Ann Lieberman

We also had the honor to welcome Counsellor of Education Paula Mattila from the Finnish National Board of education as our visiting lecturer. She facilitated a discussion on global education as part of the Finnish National Curriculum and on global education in general.

After the opening sessions, conference participants formed global teams, with the task of starting to “model the GEC”. The idea behind the task was that each global team would get to know each other, have an opportunity to discuss the day´s topics and would start to model GEC by using Innovation Education materials and tools. The global teams were so focused in building their GEC models that they almost forgot lunch!

In the afternoon professor Jari Multisilta ran a great presentation about ICT in Global Education, and Professor Jari Lavonen talked about linking the Innovative School model with global education. Tiina Korhonen, the Head of Innokas Network, summarized the Innovation Education idea and challenged all GEC educators to make learning and operational innovations and share them globally.

In the last session, each global team finalized their models and presented them, complete with accompanying stories. The models and stories about GEC highlighted the day – what a great idea and needs sharing moment it was! We agreed to share these moments with the larger GEC community.

It´s a great to be part of GEC and to build it together with you. The next step is to build strong partnerships with schools, teachers and students to make global education a part of everyday school life. We’ll have our next meetings next summer in China (summer conference) and a GEC Finland meeting in September.

If you are interested in joining GEC please don´t hesitate to contact us!

Best,
Tiina, Kati and Minna

Last week, Innokas Network hosted the Global Educational Community (GEC) Conference at the University of Helsinki. During the week, collaborators from China, USA, Australia and Finland built deeper knowledge of each country’s educational practice on many levels.

The program of the week was based on the Innovative School Model, which emphasizes the role of school stakeholders as innovators. The Innovative School model was present throughout the week, with additional presentations on innovation, creativity and Innovation education. We had discussions also on the best project based learning practices, on 21st Century Skills, and on collaboration with nearby community. To get our hands dirty on the subject, we also run hands-on sessions on everyday technology and robotics.

     

Professor Jari Lavonen presented the Finnish education system, curriculum and evaluation practices. We also had an amazing opportunity to visit schools (Saunalahti School in Espoo, Mäntymäki school in Kauniainen and Normal Lyceum of Helsinki), the Embassy of the United States of America and the Museum of Technology. On each visit, we were warmly welcomed, and we learned about the valuable work on 21st Century Skills these collaborators do in their own field. 

Tweets were flying (#GEC2015 #innokas2015) and blogs were posted throughout the week. We all learned so much from each other and we are looking forward to continuing our collaboration. Now we all are better equipped to help our students in becoming global citizens!

Kati, Tiina ja Minna

We had a great joy to get a visitor from Boston in to our class. And not just a random visitor but a friendly, ethusiastic physics teacher Stacy who actually knew a Little Finnish!:)

First we studied how the circuits work and made some tests.Kids were thrilled!They weren’t afraid of trying  and they didn’t even realize that they were studying physics.

After studying we applied the things we’ve learned into real life by making cool gadgets as “the answering light” or “space”. The answering light is very useful in the classroom because by using it, students won’t have to raise their hands anymore. (According to the professional opinion of a 1st grader.) One just switches on the light that stands on her desk and the teacher sees it. In this particular gadget, the switch actually consists of two parts: a teddy-bear and a car. When the teddy is placed on the car , the light lights up! See the picture below.

As a teacher, I hope that the future learning and future school could be more like the two days’ experience we had: Full of joy without having the fear of failure even when facing new challenging things to study.

I’d like to see my class bubbling creativity and enthusiasm again!

Class 1.A and teacher Anna-Kristiina,

Ylikylä School, Rovaniemi

 

At Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu (SYK) 26 pupils from the 5th grade have worked on a theme BRIDGE. In our class the theme is seen as a mental construction – we are building a bridge to Old People’s Home and to our partner school Janesville.

We started on working on our drama lessons by thinking somebody’s circle of life. What could have happened in person’s life when she/he was a child, a young person, an adult, an old person? Afterwards pupils made up 10 questions they would ask when we visited Old People’s Home.

Pupils worked on pairs and in groups

   

Pupils were very exited about the visit, because they didn’t know what to expect. Reactions were different depending on the answers they got. After the visit we went back to school and instead of Math lesson, pupils talked and talked about their experiences. Pupils were amazed, happy, schocked about the answers.of four. We hoped to get 13 interviews, but in the end only seven persons wanted to answer pupils’ questions.

Yesterday pupils started to write a profile of their senior person. When their profiles are ready, pupils will take it to their person and have a conversation about it.

– Raini Sipilä

We’ve been really busy with the animations. We are using the movie also for a film competition here in Espoo and got really busy in the end as the competition’s deadline is on Friday the 27th of February. But we made it! You’ll see it soon but as for now.. some pictures making of…

3K, Jalavapuisto school, Espoo, Finland