eduix – We change societies

Looking back, so we know where to move forward

Posted on December 21, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Despite all challenges and tragedies, some dare to say that the future came earlier during 2020. This “future” is complex, it scares us when we realize that education inequality has increased even more when it was already unacceptable, and school closure set back successes achieved through hard years of effort and investment. However, this same future brings hope when we have witnessed how education stakeholders have moved innovation from the margins to the center of many education systems to overcome the challenges imposed by the lockdown and social isolation.

In the report “Beyond reopening schools: how education can emerge stronger than before Covid-19”, Emiliana Vegas and Rebecca Winthrop propose five actions to guide transformation of education systems:

Leverage public schools, given their essential role in equalizing opportunity across dimensions within society;
Emphasize the instructional core of teaching and learning;
Deploy education technology to power up schools in a long-term manner and for the core benefits of teaching and learning;
Forge stronger and more trusting relationships between parents and teachers;
And implement an iterative approach of understanding the evidence and setting the course of change accordingly.

Eduix participa da São Paulo Tech Week 2020

Posted on December 18, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Eduix participates in the São Paulo Tech Week 2020

No dia 17 de dezembro de 2020, a Eduix participou da São Paulo Tech Week 2020, a maior semana de tecnologia da América Latina.

On the 17th of December 2020, Eduix participated in the São Paulo Tech Week, the biggest tech week in Latin America.

The Southern Africa Innovation Support needed visionaries to rethink the business ecosystem in the region. We attended their call.

Posted on December 9, 2020January 9, 2021 by Lais Oliveira Leite

In August 2020, The Southern Africa Innovation Support Programme (SAIS 2) opened a call for “projects to pilot and validate solutions to make Southern African startup ecosystems more resilient and better able to face an uncertain future”. The context of the call was the fact that Covid-19 has revealed flaws in the worldwide innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. They challenged applicants to find these flaws and offer solutions to the innovation business ecosystem in the region, so it would become stronger and more resilient against adversities.

Promptly, Glowdom and Eduix, supported by the EDUDITRA project in cooperation with Haaga-Helia UAS started the discussion to create a consortium. Over the year, the group had already organized a webinar series to discuss about digitizing education ecosystem in Namibia. The webinar “Education in the world 4.0: bridging the gap between education and the market” counted with the participation of Hasekiel Johannes, the Innovation Officer of Namibia Business Innovation Institute (NBII). The moment we remembered how well aligned the webinar discussions and participation were, that was the start of our project consortium.

A teacher toolkit for developing positive relationship with students

Posted on November 18, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

When I came to Finland for my Master studies, I wanted to research about a topic that already intrigued me in Brazil when I was working as school psychologist in a rural school of Ceará.

I was interested in understanding how some teachers managed to have such a good relationship with their students, which impacted positively on the students’ learning; while other teachers struggled with it. By good relationship I mean when teachers and students are focused on teaching and learning the content while they are also relaxed. Spontaneous actions such as jokes, laughs, personal reflections, and life stories’ sharing color the interactions and are important parts of the education process. I could observe that the students were more focused on the content when they had such a good relationship with the teachers, than when they did not. I could also see how this impacted on the teachers’ satisfaction regarding their work from the way they talked about it.

Developing museums’ resilience by digitizing archives and operations

Posted on November 12, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Institutions that store and protect cultural heritage, such as museums and archives, are vital resources for mental health, well-being, social cohesion, and cultural learning. Today, more than ever, the importance of culture and creativity for society is clear. During the Covid-19, those with access to the Internet have constantly resorted to online cultural production provided by institutions and private initiatives. Who, during the past months, has not watched a live session with their favourite singers, read an e-book temporarily available during the months of lockdown, or visited a museum “walking” through its digital corridors in a 360-degree view?

Unfortunately, the lockdown measures over this year and the impossibility of physical visiting have caused massive loss of revenue for cultural institutions such as museums and archives. In addition, the digital gap due to lack of Internet accessibility in many regions around the world have increased largely and strongly affected those institutions that cannot resort to such resources, especially the smaller and private initiatives in small cities or rural areas.

Scaling up our digital ecosystem in Namibia …

Posted on October 21, 2020October 27, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

… The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as digitalization in general, are putting pressure on the schools’ curricula and education, and it is challenging for them to support the digital leaps in the society.

The digital transformation in schools requires constant and close support, and to be beneficial, local school processes and practices have to be understood and taken into account.

To achieve sustainable solutions, the local edTech solutions and ecosystem supporting them have to be available, and this kind of local ecosystems should be possible to be set and scaled up agilely.

When I learned that hard work and free time are not mutually exclusive

Posted on October 15, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

When I arrived in Finland in 2016 to start my Master degree in Education, I was stressed. I had to carry luggage everywhere, buy and arrange furniture, organize University papers, attend meetings with supervisors… I also had to deal with the fact that I was in a new place, far away from home, my family and friends. But I was where I wanted to be and I was familiar with stress.

Eventually I started to focus on integrating myself in the University life. I had over 30 ECTS to complete and I was excited and ready to work “full-on”, get stressed by deadlines, reduce my social life and increase my Education expertise. After all, I didn’t come to Finland to make friends, I came to study and get a Master diploma. Well, things happened in a different way.

eExams – today

Posted on October 15, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

By Johanna Kiviranta

“We can’t organize the course exam as a mass event with everyone in the classroom. The exam will be organized online. How that happens, well, to me that might be an even bigger mystery than to you. I will get back to this, when we have come up with a solution.”

This is a direct quote from my professor in one of my university courses at the beginning of the semester. This is just one course that has been monstrously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Multiply this by the amount of courses and the amount of education institutions around the globe, and we can say that the education sector is facing huge challenges and a pressing need for re-organization due to the current crisis.

Those painful 10 seconds of silence waiting for a reply

Posted on September 24, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

If you are a teacher or educator of any sort that have already organized a virtual lecture, and at some point of your presentation you wanted to engage your audience by asking a question, you know what I am talking about.

It takes about 5-15 seconds for someone to find the mic icon, turn it on, and speak up. But these seconds are enough time for you to wander around all your insecurities about teaching in a virtual setting. It goes more or less like this: “OMG, nobody is paying attention to what I am saying and I am speaking alone here” – since in many situations the video camera is off and you cannot actually see what your audience is doing.

https://schools.eduix.fi/formjack/lomakkeet/119/lomakkeet.html

If you are interested, contact lais@eduix.it to discuss more about it.

Man hands holding global network and data customer connection on nature background.

Schools are reopening – now what?

Posted on August 13, 2020December 22, 2020 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Now that a new academic year/semester is about to start, the hot topic of the past weeks has been how to proceed with the reopening of schools amid the Covid-19 pandemic, taking into consideration the implications of it for the population health and education. Among teachers, parents, school leaders, and academic researchers there seems to coexist opposite, but also complementary, opinions.

So far, children who attend kindergarten and initial years of primary education seem to be the safest cohort of pupils to come back to school routines thanks to the shared evidence that the vast majority of them do not suffer from hard symptoms due to the virus. Additionally, parents with younger children might need a faster return of them to school activities, so parents can have better conditions to work. However, although younger children are safer to be exposed to physical and face-to-face socialization, they can also be potential carriers and spread the virus among family members, affecting mostly the ones who are in the risk groups (e.g. grandparents who take care of them).