ALO Finland introduces a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Innovative Pedagogy and EdTech in Finland, inspired by Finnish education.
The emphasis is on the practical and holistic approach, as well as simple solutions that can be easily repeated, adopted and further developed further worldwide. The course is aiming to be more than just content delivery and theory.
A MOOC at its best is a global learners’ community. There is plenty of interaction and collaboration, sharing good ideas, thoughts and also failures, and developing good practices further together!
In an ideal situation, a MOOC can have thousands of students collaborating together and sharing thoughts and ideas in their learners’ community.
In this online environment the learners have the responsibility for their own learning and the traditional teacher fades away in the background.
Finnish Education, EdTech and the New National Curriculum
Finland is facing changes in the new national curriculum and the integration of technology into schools. For the successful digitalization, innovative pedagogy needs to go with the technology.
Technology is a tool, and learning, teaching and human interaction should always be the number ones!
Technology can be a great tool in education. However, new teaching methods need to go hand in hand with technology to make the most of it.
Books, pens and chalkboard are still great tools. Technology is already a big part of our living environment and even more so in the future.
Children need to learn to understand technology and to use it well. IT skills are necessary more and more at work and life itself. How can we support this best at schools?
The ALO Finland Online Course
As an example, a primary year 1 class was flipped and on top of it we used a digital maths game instead of a book in the lessons. Gamified lessons with the little learners. A digital maths learning game was used to enhance learning and collaboration between primary year 1 pupils.
Also maths videos were given as homework, so that pupils could practice the skills needed to play the game effectively in the class.
Furthermore, coding lessons in primary school are part of the MOOC. Instead of teaching primary year 3 pupils how to code, they showed how to teach coding to other classes. They have taught around 200 other pupils the basics of coding.
Course Content
- Introduction to the MOOC as a global learning environment and authentic learning.
- Flipped classroom pedagogy in a secondary class in the European School of Brussels IV. Experimenting in English as a second language classes, was the starting point to further experiments in the primary school and the Finnish Twist pedagogy.
- Coding lessons in the primary school.
- Gamified, flipped classroom in primary school.
- EdTech and child-centered approach in preschool. They have 28 preschoolers, a smartboard and three Ipads and they have managed to do many interesting projects. Lack of resources is no excuse!
- Award winning environmental school and phenomenal learning in practice.
And more content is coming…
Webinars
Please use Twitter, #ALOFinland in advance to send interesting topics to discuss and questions to answer.
Learning Objectives
- Learn about interesting and innovative practical experiments and pedagogy in Finnish education, preschools and primary education.
- Learn to share, benchmark and collaborate in a global MOOC community.
- Practice positive peer assessment skills, emphasis on problem solving and solutions.
- Innovate! Create, try in practice, share your brave experiments with others and learn from other teachers’ innovations in learning and teaching.
- Develop together! Share the good practices and also the mistakes that you made along the way. Failures can be great learning opportunities and there is rarely a straight route to success stories.
Certificate
A free online certificate is provided after successful completion of the course. It is an online version, which can be easily linked to your LinkedIn profile. Also a printed certificate can be ordered.
Greetings from Finland!
