Learn. Lead. Innovate.

Learn. Lead. Innovate

tiistai 25. marraskuuta 2014

keskiviikko 5. marraskuuta 2014

Finland, Muurame and senior high school



Here is my PowerPoint presentation for our Dutch visitors. Dutchmen were primary and secondary teachers, vocational education teachers, UAS teachers and their teacher trainers from Stenden University of Applied Sciences Netherlands www.stenden.com



torstai 23. lokakuuta 2014

Perspective on Finnish Education by Amy & Kia


                                         The symbol of the teachers in United States is apple


Tift College of Education in Mercer University (Georgia U.S.A) researchers Amy Bagby and Kia James visited Jyväskylä area schools. Focus was all level K-12 schools and at least the Institute of Educational Leadership in Jyväskylä University. Researchers wanted to gain better understanding of the Finnish education system. The information they gathered from this research will be used to make recommendations for policy change in the United States. Amy and Kia observed classrooms with a primary focus on teachers and their actions. Researchers worked hard and visited in three days – 8 different schools and lot of staff!

-Muurame Senior High school – Principal Aki Puustinen

-Institute of Educational Leadership Jyväskylä Uni – Lecturer Jerker Polso

-Nisulanmäki Junior High School – Principal Minna Kalakari

-Mäkelänmäki Elementary School – Principal Kari Heikkilä

-State's Teacher Training school – Councellor Hanna Närhi

-Pre school

-Voionmaa Senior High School – Councellor Timo Ilomäki, Principal Seppo Haavisto and vice Principal Sirkka Ruuhonen

-Cygnaeus Senior High School – Principal Ari Pokka



                       Amy, Kia & Merjo are discussing evaluation and Finnish assessments

sunnuntai 5. lokakuuta 2014

Creating entrepreneurial DNA through education

How we can create entrepreneurship through the education system?



A group of 26 Colombian University Professors and Deans of few Colombian Universities, and some Colombian Government representatives visited our school and Muurame community.  Professors wanted to see how entrepreneurship studies and entrepreneurial attitude can be spread also to the elementary schools and smaller pupils.

 

Last year we had certain entrepreneurship year in all our community’s  schools. We had training camp to K-12 and later to teachers. Every school level went through same kind of “BusinessCamp”.  Pupils, students and teachers and principals trained same kind of studies :

1.       Team learning / build a team and work with it

2.       Project learning / real project and implementation

3.       Technology included / iPads in presentations

4.       Creativity tasks / baking cakes together

5.       Joy and laugh

 
Building up and implementing entrepreneurial DNA and culture


tiistai 17. kesäkuuta 2014

Buenos Aires MoE meets our students

 
Buenos Aires MoE delegation and our students

We were honoured to get visitors from Buenos Aires Ministry of Education. Argentina delegation was interested in several perspectives in Finnish education :

 
1.      Inclusion and social equity

2.      Primary education

3.      Upper secondary education

4.      Finnish educational system success

5.      Curriculum development and assessment

6.      Reform and change management

7.      Career guidance and navigation

8.      Teacher education

9.      Entrepreneurial education

10.  Use of technologies in education

11.  Seeing schools in action

                                                                      
                                                               Mercedes de Miguel



Mercedes de Miguel is the Director General of Education Planning for the Education Ministry in the City of Buenos Aires. Her duty is to improve education quality through pedagogic innovation and constant improvement of student’s learning.

Mercedes with her team plans, develops and implements education policy for the 1.200 schools, 370.000 students and 70.000 teachers of City of Buenos Aires. Depending directly on the Education Minister, the area has a broad perspective of the city´s education. 

As a General Director she develops the following tasks: 
-Designs and implement curriculum for all the levels of education in the City of Buenos Aires.
-Develops strategies and implement actions to integrate education and learning processes of education institutions to digital culture.
-Elaborates and provides with pedagogic resources pursuing quality education in every school.
-Plans and implement strategic educational policies for teacher training development and teaching and learning of foreign languages in the educational system with English as a second language compulsory from 1st grade in every public school.
-Focuses on ever student learning improvement.

 Mercedes is currently leading the reform of the city´s secondary level curriculum which is the first in its history. The New Secondary School puts students in the center of education policy. The curriculum is based in learning competencies and character development for XXI century students.


                                              Our trained and skilled student guides
 

maanantai 14. huhtikuuta 2014

Why school news ?

Our school has started broadcast the news of our own lately. We got this idea from Chrystal Polski U.S. Fulbright teacher from Minnesota. She is now having a Fulbright season in Finland Jyväskylä area. There are lot of 21st century educational and learning perspectives in school news. Here some ideas :

1. Using technology like iPads and iMovie
2. News were totally made by students = ownership of the school
3. Performance and creativity
4. Sharing via Youtube, Twitter and Facebook
5. Communication is leading / flow of information
6. Collaboration and trust between students and teachers
7. Flipped classroom in communication

See also this link : http://youtu.be/gjApwxeNM_U




 

lauantai 12. huhtikuuta 2014

Google, Gafe and the future ?


                                       Mr. Ross Mahon Gafe Specialist. Photo Aki Puustinen

We had marvellous chance to join and learn Google/Samsung concepts in Hämeenlinna (Finland) ICT conference. Google has enormous vision to manage all the information on earth. They have great plans also in education sector. We heard Mr Ross Mahon (Gafe Evangelist) who works at Google trying to get the world of education thinking about 100 % web.

Google thinks that we need to prepare our  kids/students for a world we can't see yet. They believe that next generation will need following skills :

                                                 
                                                                Photo Aki Puustinen

Google's answer for that is Gafe (Google Apps for Education) ecosystem. Gafe consist the whole package : Chromebook, Apps, Google +, E-mails, Google Drive etc. Their point is learning on the web. They might be on the right track...



maanantai 17. maaliskuuta 2014

Cloud computing at senior high school

                                                 
                                                                  Photo Julia Anttonen


Our school has done several years mobile learning with tablets. We use mostly iPads. Every teacher has iPad of their own and students can use school’s iPads. Nowadays we have 45 iPads at school. Tablets are quite useless without proper cloud computing strategy. The main questions with tablets are :

1.       How to store files with tablets ?

2.       How to share files and materials, videos, photos etc. ?

We have worked out this problem with school’s official account. Muurame senior high school has got own accounts in Slideshare, Dropbox, Instagram and Youtube. Teachers know the passwords and students/teachers can store and share files via these accounts.
 
                                                          Our Ball 2014 from Youtube.
 

 
                                          School's Instagram account and High School Man


                                            Slideshare is handy to share PowerPoint slides
 

tiistai 11. maaliskuuta 2014

maanantai 17. helmikuuta 2014

TED Mobiluck / Gamification and game theory in school culture


TED Mobiluck video series. One goal in our Mobiluck project is to implement gamification and game theory in school system and culture. Here is our model and implementation from Muurame Senior High School. If the video doesn't work, see this link.