Building Bridges in Sonderborg

Building Bridges in Sonderborg

Mrs. Paula Vorne 

1st grade teacher

Maikkula Comprehensive school is privileged to be a part of a Comenius project called ”Building Bridges from North to the South”. Our first meeting was held in Sonderborg, Denmark at the end of September. Trip to Sonderborg didn’t go quite as planned due to a technical failure in the airplane so we had we had to make an extra landing to Helsinki instead of flying straight to Copenhagen. We were really happy when we finally reached Sonderborg at 2AM.

Main goal for this first meeting was to get to know our partners from Denmark, France, Italy and Spain and plan the exercices we would do before the next meeting. We also learned about the different school systems in all participating countries. It was really interesting to hear how similar and yet different the school systems in different corners of Europe really are. I think we’d have a lot to learn from each other.

Every class that is involved in this project gets a pen pal-class from another country and the pupils make personal profiles to the Moodle-platform that is used in this project. Children are really expecting to get to know the pupils from the other countries. All the participating schools build a Comenius wall to their own school and all partners send some material on that wall. Before Christmas we will film children singing traditional Christmas songs and send the film to our partners via Moodle. 

Our Danish hosts had arranged us a lot of interesting program for our three day visit. We got to participate to the lessons, the students had prepared presentations for us of their city, Denmark and capital Copenhagen and they prepared a delicious lunch for us representing traditional Danish foods. We also got really nice sightseeing tours to the island of Als and saw some really beautiful and interesting places although the first day there was a real autumn storm in the area.

Three days in Sonderborg with our Comenius friends were filled with laughter and talk in many different languages. We spent so much time together that we were a really tight group when the trip was over. Thank you so much to our Danish hosts for three amazing days in Sonderborg! Next meeting is in Cogoleto, Italy in February 2013 and I think that everyone is really looking forward to meeting others again. At least I am!

PIL release in Patamäki

On Thursday 18th of October we had visitors from Microsoft. Mr. Vesa Äyräs, local PIL-manger in Finland, discussed with the teachers what is it all about being Pathfinder school. The students had their own ceremony at the gym where they could ask questions.


Mr. Äyräs told to students about the work Microsoft is doing with the schools around the world trying to make better schools together with the teachers, headmasters and students.

Close to the nature

It's amazing how close to the nature we are. Just behind the school fence, there's a field owned by a local farmer. Almost every autumn we got bird visitors heading to south resting and eating. Quite a learning environment for all of us!

3rd class music project

Third class music project

Mrs. Kaisa Loponen, 3rd grade teacher

We had a luck to be part of Oulu Symphony Orchestra’s music project. In the beginning of semester we got two professional musicians as a visitor to our class for a week. Mrs. Anna-Maija Rousselle (violin) from the Oulun Symphony Orchestra and Mr. Petteri Turunen (pianist) from the Oulu Polytechnic. It was a quite intensive week playing, singing, building the world of voices, making poets and acting. Finally we arranged concert for the people of the retirement home nearby in the Chapel of Maikkula. The concert was about the autumn forest and bears who saw and experienced many things there.

The students planned the performation together and musicians brought their own visions with the nyckelharpa(Norwegian key-violin) and piano. Still the concert looked like that the kids had done it. The students were very satisfied for the week and learned a lot. For example the knowledge about the profession of musician, the skills of playing and singing and especially how to make a concert during a short time. We got also a lot of experience about the co-operation and how to “throw one self” into a new situation. Being part of performance was an exciting situation for many students, but remained as a positive thing in their minds. It was also nice that the local newspaper interviewed the students and made a short story with the pictures. http://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/kulttuuri/koululaiset-ja-muusikot-luovat-taide-elamyksia-vanhuksille/603833/

Now we are waiting for the November when we have an opportunity to visit the Concert hall and meet the musicians in the job. We see their rehearsal for the evening concert and see what they really do!

KODU-project started

KODU-project started!

Kodu is as a visual game program language produced by Microsoft. It is freely downloadable from the Microsoft Research pages.

 

Teaching and learning should be fun also and that’s why we started to find out what is the suitable environment for making games. The selection was easy. Kodu is free, it is easy to learn and it is very rewarding because its easiness.

We made a project plan and made the goals. The main developing areas are:

-          using game technology in teaching and learning

-          Peer Coaching in student-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher

-          learning together

-          social skill

-          problem skills solving

-          creativity

-          joy of learning and motivation

-          critical thinking

-          entrepreneurship

There was almost 30 interested kids willing to be a coach and game maker. We could only take 11 students because of the capacity of the technology.  The club starts next Thursday. We got a real kick start when Mr. Tony Manninen PHD of game technology and a CEO of Ludocraft game company is opening the club. He is going to us hints of game making and telling about the game industry and planning games as a future profession. Mrs Katja Vainikainen from Valmentamo company is coaching us how to be as a coach. We are so excited about it!

Amazing week!

Amazing week!

Our respected teacher Timo Fordell, who has taught 30 years in our school, was awarded as a “Teacher of the year” in our area selected by the colleagues in the Ostro Bothnia region. Timo is a soul of our school. He has been doing such a valuable work with students and families in decades. Timo is a pioneer of using ICT and knowledge building and has given many tips and tricks to other teachers in our school and city. We are all celebrating Timo’s success together with the whole community. 

And this was not all. We got also official information that our school was selected to be part of a Microsoft Partners in Learning-program (PIL) as a Pathfinder school. What an exciting year to come! The work includes taking part of network of 99 other Pathfinders and Mentor schools from 51 countries. We are the only school in Finland. The criteria why those schools were chosen were because they have strong school leadership and have established a record of innovation and successful change implementation.

When you go to the net...

”When you go to the net, good things happen” (Finnish ice hockey coach)

And into the net we go.

This blog is for all of you who are interested in our daily life here in Patamäki. Ups and downs, projects, thougts, ideas and hopefully innovations. Thoughts from the enthusiastic teachers and educators living in the hearth of learning and teaching. And of course-learn from each other!

Patamäki (in English Pothill) Primary school is part of Maikkula Comprehensive school in the city of Oulu in Northern Finland. There are 150 students and 9 educators in our unit. The students are 7-12 years of age. The pedagogy of our school is based on co-operative learning which is supported by the modern learning environment like furnishing, wireless network, laptops, interactive white boards.

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My name is Jukka Miettunen and work as a pedagogical manager and a 4^th grade teacher in Patamäki. Except that I confessed in the topic that I am an enthusiastic ice hockey fan I am an enthusiastic school developer. My special interests are leadership, co-operative learning, physical learning environments, learning technology and especially games in learning and teaching. Most of all I want to make school better place to learn and work for the future of our children.