Learn. Lead. Innovate.

Learn. Lead. Innovate

tiistai 31. joulukuuta 2013

What does it mean to be a Certificated Institute in Finland?


 
Muurame Senior High School has been several years highly qualified institute. This means lot of development work day by day. Our school has gained three times the certificate for promoting sustainable development. Our school was the very first senior high school to achieve this status. Today there are only 5 senior high school in Finland who has reached this certificate.Certificate stands for quality.
Criteria for sustainable development certificate :
 

1.       PLANNING

Values – sustainable development is one of the main values in our school and everybody is aware of these values. Briefing staff, students and parents about these values

Legal requirements – school/staff knows the rules and legal regulations of sustainable development

Organization and resources – school has an environmental team and enough resources (skills, people, money, time etc.). School management supports these activities

Sustainable development program – school has a development plan with goals, timetables, staff and activities/actions. Students and teachers are involved in planning

2.       IMPLEMENTATION

Themes and implementation – annual themes in learning/coaching and in school’s general policy

Networking – active role and tendency to find new networks

Education and coaching – good knowledge on ecological, cultural, social and economical environments. Thinking skills like critical thinking, understanding of causality, evaluation and visions. New learning environments like nature, experiences, social, mobile, technological and cultural environments. Possibilities to engage and to be active. New learning methods and pedagogy in coaching.

3.       EVALUATION AND DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Systematic evaluation – school evaluates itself every year. Neutral monitoring outside of the school every third year.

Development plan and report – A 3-year plan. Reporting to all partners.

Next time we have this supervising in March 2014. So wish us luck for this big challenge…
Happy New and Sustainable Year 2014 !

 

 

keskiviikko 16. lokakuuta 2013

Sofa school 24/7 ?


When I was teaching history in my class I suddenly got an idea of classless school - Sofa school. Everywhere you sit down there is a school. Simple.

Basics :

1. Open 24/7
2. No school buildings and limited staff
3. Only moderator or facilitator
4. #sofaschool chat every day 2-3 hour
5. Materials in clouds (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud)
6. Learning via discussions and dialogue
7. Informal and unformal learning
8. Global classroom and intercultural students
9. Languages English, Chinese, Spanish
10. Voluntary and crowdsourcing
11. No curriculum : "what do you want to learn" ?
12. Social aspect : student get passion to see their classmates and there will be meeting and encounters
13. "Everyone is a teacher and everyone is a student"

Could this work ?
 


tiistai 15. lokakuuta 2013

Student leadership made by VideoscribeHD


VideoscribeHD is an excellent tool to make small presentations. You can use your own pictures or Videoscribe's library. You can add different elements like music, paper, text or record your own voice. Handy and easy to use. Here is mine "student's voice" in words. Picture was taken from our school's sustainable certificate and video was linked to Youtube.

tiistai 8. lokakuuta 2013

Finnish best practices and feedback in Indian press

It was great to have some feedback about Indian Educational Leader Delegation in September 2013. Here some articles in local press in Chennai area. Thank you a lot for this important and encouraging feedback.