Name of the piloting schools: Kevätkumpu school & Vårberga school
Mentors from University of Helsinki
Two primary schools participated in the project and the piloting started with them in March 2021. The schools are: Kevätkumpu school, a comprehensive school for Finnish speaking children, and Vårberga school, a primary school for Swedish speaking children. Both schools work in a same building, in the city of Porvoo. About 30 teachers have been involved in the workshops.
They followed the Dynamic process model phases by starting with an anchoring meeting with the principals and key ICT teachers from each school. They have had several joint planning meetings with the coordinating teams where we have introduced the School mentoring model and made together decisions of the development steps. They also introduced the project and the development possibilities shortly in online teacher meetings in both schools in May 2021. The schools have to change to a new digital learning and working environment based on Teams and O365 applications at the end of 2021, and they wanted to use the iHub4Schools mentoring process to improve their pedagogical and knowledge practices in this situation.
For mapping the development needs, in September 2021 University of Helsinki organized an online workshop (last 1.5 hours through Team channels and meetings) for all teachers in both schools where the participants evaluated their schools digital practices in small groups using the Innovative digital school model as a framework. They provided a Word template for each group to write down their thoughts on
1) the current good practices,
2) needs for improvement
3) ideas and suggestions for new practices
The participants had a possibility to continue writing in the documents two weeks after the workshop. After the workshop we had a meeting with the schools’ coordination teams where we examined the workshop outcomes based on a summary and recommendations made by the mentors/researchers.
Two main development areas for schools turned out to be 1) to define a teaching bath for improving students’ basic digital skills, 2) make a digital communication plan for the schools.
Look at the map below to see where the Regional Innovation HUBs are located in Finland:
