Olli is 36 years old, he lives in Pori, a city 110km west from Tampere, Eduix’s headquarter.
When Olli was a child, he used to skateboard during summers and snowboard in Finnish winters. Nowadays, however, he is more keen to stick his foot on the ground and play frisbee golf during his free time. After work, Olli also likes to walk around his neighbourhood, where he easily has access to nature around.
Pori and
For about 10 years, Olli was a landscaping artist. He used to build yards, arrange pavements out of natural materials, such as stones and trees, assemble wood fences, build house terraces etc. However, because this was, in practice, a seasonal job, with a lot of work during Finnish summer and not so much during the winter time, he started to think about other professions.
That’s when he told me he’s always been good with computer programming – which was his hobby since childhood. So, he decided to become a professional programmer about 3 years ago, when he started to study on it at a professional level. As things happen naturally when they just seem to be right, one and a half year later, Eduix took him as its new employee.
Every time I would get involved in export/exchange education projects in Finland, I would remind asking myself:
How did Finland change its own education system? How did the transformation happen?
Because when foreign visitors (like me, some years ago) come here, it is difficult to see beyond the amazing schools that appear in front of our eyes. One needs to understand that what we see today is the result of a long-term process, with conflicts of ideas and even drawbacks.
For example, did you know that…
… Before WW2, Finnish primary education was formal, teacher-centered, and moral-oriented? It was inspired in the German model of education, in which more “capable” students were tracked to “academic subjects” and those students who were lagging behind (or, as they used to say, “preferred manual work”) were tracked to “vocational studies”.
… Back in the 1950s, Finland had a public-private school system? Additionally, the government used to fund private schools in order to both support the post-war increased demand for education and extend government control over them.
… After WW2, the three major transformation policy agenda in Finland were: accessibility (universal and unified education), curriculum (holistic and personalized education), and professionalism (qualified teachers)? Later, they also invested efforts on developing career counselling, so students would get more support on making decisions for their lives.
… The Finnish Primary School Teachers’ Association was one of the strongest civil society organization in favor of an unified school system? Their ideas were in direct opposition to the general opinion of university professors back then.
… After unifying the school system in 1970s, one of the first aspect to be developed was special needs support? So the schools could attend the diverse needs of pupils in order for all to reach education success.
… Finland has mostly implemented education approaches based on research developed abroad, such as USA, Canada and UK? For instance, Finnish universities and schools were one of the first countries to implement in large scale the cooperative learning methodology from Johnson brothers.
What happens in a Aquarium …
A source that helped me understand this transformation process was the famous book Finnish Lesson, written by Pasi Sahlberg. It was reading this book that I learned that, in the 1990s, Finnish schools and municipalities were protagonists of the education system transformation, when teachers, parents, and pupils used to network in an organic and capillary manner in order to exchange ideas about how school should work. This network became then “the Aquarium Project”, a national school improvement initiative enabling all Finnish schools, principals, and teachers to network with each other, with the purpose to transform schools into active learning communities.
As soon as I learned about the Aquarium Project, I immediately thought about Eduix office’s main room, which is also called Aquarium. You can see it in the back of our office, in the picture below.
My curiosity arose because Eduix’s Aquarium room is where the main meetings happen, between workers and board members, when we have visitors, or when we have a high number of attendees in the meeting. It was there where I have shared my ideas with others and built further roadmaps about developing capacity building and education exchange with partners. I immediately asked Rami Heinisuo, Eduix CEO, what was the meaning behind the name of that room, since it was also called Aquarium. And so he said:
The glass wall is the reason. We could fill it with water and have fish there… And there was a computer classroom at the Tampere university in the 90’s that was named Akvaario, because of the glass walls…
But your story is suitable also.
While laughing about his answer, I realized I will not see the Aquarium meeting room as I did before. Now I have the sense that, somehow, we are continuing the “Aquarium project” since 1990s, in our own manner. In 1996, Eduix was funded and our team started to listen to education institutions in order to develop edtech solutions for the benefit of the Finnish education system.
Eduix participated in the X International Symposium on Research, organized by the Colombian Association of Higher Education Institutions with Professional Technical, Technological or University training (ACIET). The event happened from 29th September until 1st October and addressed the theme “Research Experiences in the Age of Pandemic”. In the event, Eduix presented how our edtech solutions has helped Finnish Higher Education Institutions (HEI) continue running their research endeavors during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The paradigm shift in education
From a global perspective, we all know that many HEIs have faced increased dropout rates due to students’ financial difficulties and inefficient virtual learning environments in the past year. Nevertheless, HEIs with the the appropriate virtual tools were able to keep educational processes running online (synchronous and asynchronous), identify students at risk and retain them, maintain staff efficiency, reduce costs, and attract more students.
Sustainable Me is our Artificial-Intelligence (AI) tool that profiles students’ competences and interests, so they can efficiently transform their learning paths into professional skills. The tool was developed in partnership with HeadAI. Our business cooperation has also resulted in another AI tool: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) AI-scorecard for assessing the extent that education curricula address the SDGs.
Imagine this …
Marek is a Polish student starting his Degree Programme in Medicine. Priya is an India company employee willing to advance on her job position. Taru wants to radically change her career in Finland, from programmer to engineer. Despite their differences, they are all about to ask themselves: what should I learn next?
Sustainable Me is a tool to help students, employees, and career changers to understand:
what professional competences they already have,
what competences they want and need to learn,
and what paths they can take to reach their goals.
The users build their skills’ profile based on their hobbies, education, jobs and careers, and the tool transforms the users’ interests into actionable learning paths.
Thank you for all of you who registered to and attended the Edupreneurs final event. We are proud to have brought together such an amazing group of education stakeholders. We have discussed how we can build a digital business education ecosystem in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The final event counted with the participation of
Mr. Matti Karvanen, Deputy Head of Mission, Chargé d’Affaires, Embassy of Finland;
Mr. Ilary Patrick Lindy, the SAIS Leader Expert;
Prof. Samuel John, from the Department of Mechanical and Marine Engineering (NUST);
Mr. Hasekiel Johannes, Innovation Officer (NUST-NBII);
Dr. Altti Lagstedt, Principal lecturer from UAS Haaga-Helia; and
Mr. Sebulon David, Glowdom CEO, the keystone organization from the Edupreneurs ecosystem.
For those who haven’t made to attend the event and for those who would like to remember key points of our discussions, kindly find the link to our recorded session below:
It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join us in the final event of the project
Edupreneurs: Networking and Empowering Education Enterpreneurs Towards a Resilient EdTech Ecosystem in Southern Africa.
During the event, we will present the main results of the project, emphasizing lessons learned and best practices compiled in the project Recommendation Paper.
The event will be held on 30th August, at 9h00 – 12h30 (Namibian time).
You can register to the event through this online form.
The recommendation paper will be published and available online in the Edupreneurs platform after the event.
The Edupreneurs project offers its final capacity building workshop:
Introduction to Flipped Classroom
In this workshop, we will implement Flipped Classroom methodology to address the main differences between traditional and flipped classrooms, as well as the conceptual understanding of how flipped classroom is a transition phase of changing teaching practices from a traditional approach toward flipped learning.
After implementing Flipped Classroom, most teachers report both increasing the success rate of their students in the course subject, as well as enjoying more their teaching. Ultimately, we would like that staff experience these results.
Aavaranta in Joensuu. Photo taken by Piotr Bartczak
The website Good News from Finland just posted an interview about my working life in Finland. The series of interviews “From start to Finnish” highlights foreigners’ work experiences. It covers how we have found jobs, overcome challenges in the process, and found the right place to be in Finland. In the interview, I share with the public the different places I worked before Eduix and how Eduix has been a great work place for me.
The Edupreneurs project, funded by the SAIS 2 program, is gaining traction and the first week of June is full of surprises! We will not only offer two workshops for building capacity among education entrepreneurs, but we will also roll out officially our digital platform on June 4th.
The Edupreneurs project will offer two workshops in the beginning of June. These workshops are part of our main goals on building innovation, resilience, digital and professional capacity for the education business ecosystem in the SADC.
The workshops will be facilitated by Hasekiel Johannes (NBII) and Dr. Alti Lagstedt (University of Applied Sciences Haaga-Helia) respectively. Save the dates!
Check out the workshops’ descriptions in the poster below and their respective registration forms further:
Click here to register to the workshop How to identify Business Opportunities in the SADC Education Sector?
Click here to register to the workshop Tools available to build a sustainable innovation ecosystem, how to play your role to benefit fully?
