R.I.P Patamäki School 1947-2014

Last teachers

This blog continues living by telling stories from daily work of four innovative teachers working in different schools in City of Oulu.

We wish you a pleasant summer!

Kodu-coaches at Work

Jukka Miettunen
Pedagogical manager

Since two years we have trained our students to be coaches to others doing Kodu-games. Those students are now in 4th grade and age of 10 or 11. Three of them had a chance to practice their skills.

Last week they were ordered to train teachers from schools all around the City of Oulu. 18 teachers gathered together and learned the secrets of Kodu coding for four hours with the help of young coaches. It was amazing to see how they took the role among adults and more-with teachers.

It was a great learning opportunity for everybody and proof that expertise doesn't ask for age :)

Next week the coaches keep on working with secondary school students in one of our schools.

Great work guys!

Kodu-research in Patamäki

My name is Polina Grigoreva, at the moment I am a Master’s degree student at the University of Oulu. The program I am studying in is called Learning, Education and Technology (LET). It deals with up-to-date learning and teaching techniques, innovative and classical approaches to skills and knowledge acquisition. For example, collaborative and self-regulated learning, which we practice ourselves a lot both within our student group and beyond it.

The thesis I am working at deals with the concept of expert systems and Kodu game Lab environment. Expert systems, computer programs that assist human experts in challenging situations, are referred to and used as an idea of what Kodu games might become, if applied in schools for learning and teaching purposes. In general, my study seeks to define the potential of Kodu games for learning tasks, probable ways of integration of educational information into informal environment. My goal is to see how it is possible for pupils to apply newly acquired information into gaming activities, as thus learn to use it not only in classroom. From a self-regulative point of view Kodu games allow pupils to visualize what they learn which also contributes to overall result.

From my side, I also would like to note that Kodu club provides a lot of opportunities for collaboration in general and creative collaboration in particular, as well as for development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills".

I also have a question about Kodu club: is it possible for me to have copies of several games made by the students who have answered the questionnaire? I would also appreciate greatly a demonstration of how those games work.

Home Coming and Celebration

On Monday whole school gathered to gym to celebrate winning project at Global Forum. Here's a photo of happy project classes and mentors.

We Are the Winners!

Mr. Jukka Miettunen
pedagogical manager

Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum was held in Barcelona Spain last week. 1200 educators, school leaders and innovators participated into this great happening.

The last day Friday culminated in awards ceremony. 260 projects all over the world selected from 12 000 applicants were presenting their work to the judges whole week. The standard of the works was extremely high and all the participant were winners. Many people rank this happening as an Olympics of Education. Quite a title!

Our school's project "Patamäki Corporation" was made with 1-4 graders in spring 2013 with four teachers: Kaisa Loponen, Paula Vorne, Kerttu Mikkonen and Jukka Miettunen. Mrs Vorne was representing the project in Barcelona. The project was about Entrepreneurship education and collaborative many way.

Watch the project from this link

Paula Vorne on the stage

Our project won the category "Cutting Edge With Technology in Learning".

All the winners

Project stand

The credit of win goes all the teachers involved, students who made it, PIL-network who was supporting us all the time, our city enabling all and of course the Finnish school system which produces excellent results all the time. It's something to be proud of :) Tomorrow the whole school is celebrating together.

Global Forum 2014 Barcelona

Microsoft Global Forum year 2014 is organized in Spain Barcelona. There are over 1000 teachers, school leaders and developers all over the world making school a better place to learn and teach.

Creativity is one of 21st Century Skills. Here's the definition of innovation and creativity. True, isn't it?

Our teacher mrs. Paula Vorne was selected to Expert Educator. Here's Paulas competition work to be judged during this week.

Entrepreneuship Education

Entrepreneusship Education
SnowHow-project

Jukka Miettunen
Pedagogical Manager

As you know one of our school strenghts is Entrepreneuship education. Last year we had a Patamäki Corporation project where students established game companies. You can read about that from the older posts in this blog.

This year we continued with companies producing services in a topic SnowHow. So snow it is and that we have a lot in this part of globe! But not enough this year, thanks global warming.

Last year we had four classes involved. Now we are doing it with the whole school and with all teachers.

The work started by seeking student leaders. The whole school gathered to gym where teachers told what it is all about. We also announced that we are recruiting student leaders. The announcement was put into the INFO-board at the school wall:

We got over 40 applications!. The teachers interviewed all applicants and selected 13 CEOs which could choose viceCEOs if they like.

After that the teachers trained the CEOs and once again we gathered together and had some brainstorming with the random groups with the lead of the CEOs. From the mass of ideas we found out 13 different business ideas to establish companies. CEOs chose companies of their own strenghts. When done, students had an opportunity to choose two favourites to join in. At last we had 13 companies who had an idea, CEO and employees.

The first four weeks we spent 2 hours/week to do the project. They all started from business plan and sharing the tasks, continued to budget and marketing plan. Every company had a teacher as a mentor.

After 6 weeks the companies were ready to operate. At first we tested the operation with our own students. Next day we invited the school next to us to participate. And finally on Saturday the parents could see what we have done. It was fun!

Local Currency

We didn't use Euros but Peuros (Patamäki Euros). Every customer received 50 Peuros to spent. Companies decided the price of the products.

Why we are doing this?

Because of 21st Century Skills. We want to prepare our students to meet the challenges when they graduate and choose the profession. Skills like co-operation, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and use of tecnology are the essential skills provided in this project.

Parents could leave feedback using the Padlet tool. From the feedback of the parents we found out that they were very satisfied to the work done in our school.

Some Examples of the Companies and Business Ideas.

Media team was responsible for the documentation. They interviewed companies and people, took photos and wrote a blog weekly.

QR-atarata. They had a track of QR-codes inside and outside the school were customers could follow a story they've made with their smart phones.

Golden Golf. English classroom was made to be a Golf Club where the company sold green fees to the golf course in the school yard. They sold also green card courses, balls and tees. They made close co-operation with the real Golf Club of our city.

Minilandia. Minilandia offered services for the small ones in the school yard. Business idea consisted of small figures placed in the snow world.

CupCakeGirls. Decided to bake and cook and have a cafe.

IceMovie. They made a video of "Small School in the middle of the snow".  The company decorated one classroom to be as a movie theatre.They presented the movie in every 15 minutes.

FrisbeeGolf. By courtesy of the local farmer they could build a Frisbee track in the field behind school fence. You could buy a round or a season ticket.

Thank you teachers responsible, students and customers for excellent work!

Visiting Science Center Tietomaa

Jukka Miettunen
Pedagogical manager
5th grade teacher

Our city Oulu is a great place with several outer learning environments. One of those is Science Center Tietomaa. The oldest center in Finland.

Thanks for the local company donation our 5th graders could spend a whole day at Tietomaa.

First we participated in a workshop where we studied how to build a bridge. We watched photos of different types of bridges around the world. Then we planned one of our own. What kind of bridge would you build out of one A4 white copy paper, 10 cm of tape and scissors? Maximum lenght should be 20 cm. When finished we tested it in a bench loading weights of 50 gr one after one.

Winners made a hollow beam bridge which carrying capacity was 250 gramms! Great!

After workshop we could spend some free time to get familiar with the whole exhibition.

At the last we watched a movie of Star and Galaxies Astronomy Show.

3 p.m was a time to go back to school. What a great day we had!