We change societies
Our goal with this recommendation paper is to share the lessons learned from the project Edupreneurs: Networking and Empowering Education Entrepreneurs Towards a Resilient EdTech Ecosystem. The project was undertaked in Southern Africa, funded by the Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS 2) programme.
This time I talked with Toni Ruusunen about his work at Eduix. Toni is among other Eduix’s employees who used to work in another field and decided to explore the world of software development. Out of his own interest, self-regulated learning, and problem-solving skills, he developed his programming competences and ended up working with us.
Toni is from Tampere and he has a high school background, “ylioppilas” how it is called in Finnish. This means that Toni doesn’t have a formal computer science background. He used to work as a construction worker, especially as a painter. However, he got bored of working outside and sometimes in bad weather conditions. That was when he shifted his attention to an indoor type of work: programming, and he set his next professional goal.
Academic peer reviewing is one of the best ways there is to boost learning: although it is hard sometimes, when you are lucky, you get to read a lot of rich, useful, informative, instructive, mind changing literature that your supervisors and peers failed to recommend for you before. And I’ve been learning so much with the recommendations of one of the reviewers from a manuscript recently submitted.
The reviewer suggested guidelines, models, and plans developed by the pioneers in the field of technology implementation in schools, back in the 1990s. Although the technology has changed in so many levels, their recommendations are still as relevant as before. In addition, it’s a great pleasure to go back in memory when we read references to CD players and digital encyclopedias that people could purchase with CDs and floppy disks. Ah those times…
Continue reading “Technology implementation in your school”As a starting point for the year 2022, I talked with Minna Ilmén, project manager at Eduix for 3 years now. It was a relaxing and fun conversation. This time, we travel to Akaa, a small village about 50km south from Tampere where Minna lives. She described her house as a small, cozy and old place in the middle of the woods, where she lives with her husband and two cats.
Despite its challenges, the year 2021 has been a mark for the internationalization of Eduix’s operations. The fact that I am writing this post in Brazil, right now, is one of its milestones. If we make a timeline of what has happened during this year, we should notice that:
I am in my home country, after 2 years of a long wait in between a pandemic, not only to visit my dear family and friends, but also to talk with education stakeholders about Eduix and our vast experience in digitizing education processes. We believe we can support Brazilian education institutions in promoting high quality hybrid and online education with our edtech solutions!
Continue reading “Eduix wishes”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.
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.
Continue reading “Olli Ovaskainen, software engineer”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.
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.
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.
Continue reading “Research experiences during the pandemic”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.
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:
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.
Continue reading “Get to know Sustainable Me”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
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:
Thank you again for being part of our joint efforts on building a digital business education ecosystem in the SADC.