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!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all Pothill-blog readers!

Visit at a Game Company

Mr. Jukka Miettunen
pedagogical manager

As you know games are an essential part of our school working culture. Our Kodu-clubbers have been working hard whole semester and as prize for that we made a visit to real game company. The company was Ludocraft here in the City of Oulu.

With the help of Mr. Tony Manninen, the CEO of company, the pupils and four teachers had a tour in the premises. We got to know how the professionals work and how to make a game step by step.

We talked about also what strengths do you need if you like to work in game industry. Mr. Manninen told to students about the importance of school and doing best in all subjects. If you like be a code maker, study math. If you are interested in  artistic part-draw, paint and use art as versatile as you can. The game industry needs also good scriptwriters so reading and writing is essential. When asked many of the students plan to work with games in the future. Let's see!

The teachers were amazed about the working environment or should we say learning environment in the company of creative business. There were a lot of insipring details like room for Lego-building, a 12 000 pieces puzzle, snooker table and a music studio.

The house was full of history of game making and playing. You could see the game consols, joystics and games from several decades.

The walls were full of material of ongoing and past game projects. The manager encourages the employees to write as much as possible and there were many printed books in the book shelf made by the Ludocraft employees. Nice!

What a nice ending for the semester before Christmas break. Hopefully Ludocraft people pay us a visit in spring time!

Happy Indepence Day Finland!

Happy Birthday Finland!

 


On December the 6th we celebrate the Independence Day of Finland. Finland became independent in 1917 so today is it's 96th birthday. 


Yesterday morning we took a moment at school and honored our independent country by raising the flag and singing a song called "Lippulaulu" which means "Flagsong". 

Later we also had a little ceremony inside where students from different grades sang songs and read poems about Finland. 

Kodu research

For the past weeks we have had a visitor from the University of Oulu, Mr. Fatiu Arilesere.

He is from Nigeria, studying Learning, education and technology (LET).

At home he works as math and introductory technology teacher for junior secondary school in Lagos,

He is doing his thesis about “Use of Kodu game Lab to enhance teaching and learning”. He is collecting data in our club to his study by observing and use of questionnaire.

Mr.Arilesere has discovered that the kids use the tool a lot and it has help them in collaborating and interacting and with their peers during any given individual and group task. Furthermore, it shows how much student participates and interacts with each other using this tool. On the one hand, during the observation students showed that they could learn from each by doing, viewing and asking from either their teachers or peers during a giving task. On the other hand, students showed how critical they could think during a giving task.

Therefore, the Kodu game lab has shown great potential in collaboration and interactive learning situation during his observation. 

A day at the Forest part 2.

A Day in the Forest- Project Part 2.

Mrs. Sanna Kokko, 3rd grade teacher

Mrs. Kaisa Loponen, 4 grade teacher

We went to forest in September where we planned a beginning for a story. We continued story making at school. The students worked in mixed group of 3^rd and 4^th graders. The groups started by making a storyline for the future story together. After that two students continued writing and two other students started making art of same issue. We continued working weekly and every time the groups met they presented what they have done. The writing pair consisted of 3^rd and 4^th graders  so the 4^th graders teached  ICT-skills at the same time for the youngers. Almost all groups made a rap out of their story.

            

The ready stories recorded with Lumia920 phones and we made QR-codes with www.goqr.me page. The printed codes attached to artworks and the raps got their own codes, too. Now the wall outside the classroom has fine ensemble of work for the enjoy of the whole school.

Co-operation with two age groups was seamless and they are waiting for next challenges. The goal for the whole project was to develop co-operation skills, problem solving, creativity and ICT-skills. We got part of nature science, Finnish language, art, music and P.E curriculum.

First Snow Fun

The luxus part of living in Finland is four seasons. Yesterday we got first snow. What a fun the students had when they saw snow flakes from classroom window!

Stay tuned for the next weeks when we start our new Entrepreneurship project "SnowHow"

Happy Autumn Holiday everyone!