Financial Agreement number 90138-CP-1-2001-1-MINERVA
Seminar Report
Ed.: Rosa Gunnarsdottir
Financial Agreement number 90138-CP-1-2001-1-MINERVA
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
Seminar 1 2
Seminar 2 5
Seminar 3 5
Seminar 4 5
First International InnoEd Conference 5
Conclusion 6
Introduction
This report will gather together information on the four project seminars and the first InnoEd conference held as a part of the InnoEd: Practical use of IT and ODL in Innovation Education project. In the projects work plans each seminar had an objective which was an integral part of the project plans and evaluations of the project progress. The emergent design of the project was dependant on the participation in the seminars regarding evaluation of experience in the project and suggestions on next steps and product designs. The objectives of the seminars can be seen in the project detailed work plans.
Seminar 1 Evaluation and planning
Place: Gnúpverjaskóli Iceland Time: 20-25 March 2002
Chair of Seminar: Svanborg Jónsdóttir
Agenda
Wednesday 20th of March
9:00 SmartVr, introduction of the virtual reality and discussions around its use.
10:30 Skyrr, introduction of the company / Jóni Eyfjörð.
12:00 Lunch at KHI The Iceland University of Education,
Introduction of the University and the ODL facilities.
Paul Johanson will introduce the Icelandic competition.
14:00 Foldaskóli, Andrea and Íris will give a demonstration of Innovation Education in the school.
Thursday 21st of March
9:00 Árnes, introduction of participants their roles and what they have done and what they want to do / Cathy.
10:00 Introduction of the project and the history of the project / Gísli and Rósa.
11:20 Innovation Education: Ideology in practice / Andrea, Rósa and Svanborg.
13:00 Introduction of the web / Gísli og Svanborg.
14:10 Children from Gnúpverjaskóli.
15:30 The projects homepage and the communication system / Gísli
16:30 The Competitions / Discussions / Matti Lindh.
Friday 22nd March
9:00 Gnúpverjaskóli, Innovation Education: Accounts of experience / Andrea and Svanborg.
10:30 Teaching materials and videos / Gísli.
13:45 The House and the Church and museum at Eyrarbakka / Birgir and Lýður.
15:00 Barnaskólinn á Stokkseyri og Eyrarbakka.
15:30 Graphics, the process of putting ideas into the competition / Gísli, Jóna and Birgir.
Discussions about the development of the web / Gill and Jonathan.
Saturday 23rd of March.
9:00 Group work, the next steps in the project / Kjetil.
13:00 Group work, the next steps in the project / Jarmo
15:00 Conclusions / Matti Hasari
Contributions
Wednesday
SmartVR
Jon the smart showed us possibilities that we might want to use as a part of our platforms. He showed us what they have been doing with the BBC, Orange and Erickson. Virtual realities with different aims and objectives, from interactive kids spaces to creative work environments.
Valuable nourishment for our planning phase.
www.smartvr.com
Skyrr
Jon the clever showed us the facilities of the company and the possibilities that Skyrr as a company has for hosting and keeping secure the children’s ideas.
www.skyrr.is
KHI
The Iceland University of Education is a growing University which has a long history of ODL use and currently 54% of the students there are ODL students. This experience is will provide us with rich ground for setting up the teachers platform, teacher training on different levels. Recently the University has taken up postgraduate studies so masters degrees and doctoral studies can now be conducted through there.
www.khi.is
Foldaskoli
Andrea and Iris welcomed us to the school and showed us around the projects of the children and the facilities that they have. Andrea gave us a presentation of the way that Innovation Education is done in the school and a bit about how it has changed over the years.
Andrea’s power point presentation
www.foldaskoli.ismennt.is
Thursday
Introductions
Kjetil Fredriksen from Ringstabekk school in Norway, just out side of Oslo. The school is a special school with children 13-16 years of age. The teaching methods make the school special, as the school policy is based on open plan and project methods, such as storyline. The school already has a dissemination role in the community as they are often asked to present their experience of their work to other schools.
Each class has about 60 children but 4 teachers working with them at a time.
They have taken part in other projects such as the entrepreneurship project run by the Nordic Minister Rad and they have also been doing small business projects with the students and work in Virtual Reality with Telenorde.
Kjetil is a science teacher, and plays the guitar and has published a CD called Kettle sweet romance.
Jonathan Towers is also a science teacher but at Roundhay School in Leeds, UK. Hehas background in teaching technology as well and runs a after school and lunch time Young Inventors Society in the school. Jonathan says that the facilities in Roundhay are none existing as the school is undergoing major refurbishment and new buildings are being built. He also said that he was very interested in the 3D and 2D designing.
Jonathan is going to married to the lovely Isabel this summer.
Gillian Walsh works at Roundhay as well she is a maths teacher by trade but also is the head of a project cell surrounding a government initiative called Gifted and Talented. That is the way that Innovation Education got into the Roundhay school environment. Gill welcomed Rosa’s experiments with Jonathan with the Young Inventors Society.
Gillian is a coordinator for GT in five schools in north Leeds and already three of these have taken up Young Inventors Societies and those are Braimwood Boys school, Primrose High school and Allerton Grange High School..
Jóna Björk Jónsdóttir is a teacher at Barnaskólinn á Eyrarbakka og Stokkseyri. She took part in one of the training courses that Gísli and Rósa had two or three years ago when she taught years 5 and 6. As a part of her work with the children in her school in Innovation Education she made a Web Quest where she used a bit of the material Rósa and Gísli had already put on the web about Innovation Education.
Jóna is working now with younger students and is finishing a Diploma Course and the Iceland University of Education. One of her things that she is working on there is Howard Gardner´s theories on Multiple Intelligences.
Birgir Edwald is the deputy head of Barnaskólinn á Eyrabakka og Stokkseyri (BES). He is a teacher and a programmer (System specialist I think is the right workd for it in English). Birgir told us that BES has been very active in the IT sector in the last few years. In 1999 BES became a leading school in IT development in Iceland getting extra funding for development and resources. This has spurred projects such as Commenius projects with Oulu and Slovenia and participation in the Idunn project as well as Innes.
Toumas Lehtinen is a Traning Coordinator for the Kerhokeskus - koulutyön tuki (Center for School Clubs). That organization makes materials for teachers, and conducts inset training for teachers as well. They also have part in coordinating and conducting the Young Scientist competition. They are interested in linking InnoEd competition to theirs. Toumas is finishing his teachers degree also.
Íris Guðlaugsdóttir is a teacher at Foldaskóli and she teaches Innovation Education. She studied architecture in USA and she sees a lot of things in her teaching of Innovation Education that she thinks should be a part of every child’s schooling in the world, and that this project could be the start of it.
Matti Lindh is a lecturer at the Oulu faculty of Education, and he is the only lecturer in Technology in Finland. He thinks that Innovation Education should be a part of thechnology Education. He contacted Tuula and Toumas in hope that they would be willing to take on the Inno Ed competition in Finland. Matti is finishing his doctoral dissertation that is about the question what is technology education?
Tuula Pihlajamaa works for Technology and Society, Technology Education Projects, which is a part of the The Finnish Association of Graduate Engineers TEK. She is interested in combining the two competitions the young scientist competition in Finland and the InnoEd one.
Jarmo Mustikka he is a lecturer at the teacher training school in Oulu. He works with Matti Hasari and Matti Lindh. Jarmo is the technology teacher in the school and has been working with the other two in finding ways to connect science and technology teaching in innovative ways.
Böðvar works in BES as well as Jóna and Birgir. He works mainly with the oldest students where he teaches Mathematics and Icelandic but also he is responsible for the IT of the oldest children. He is new to Innovation Education but wants to get involve.
Matti Hasari works a the teacher training school in Oulu with Jarmo. The school has 500 students and 63 teachers. The training school has the goal to train teachers for the north of Finland. His work with Matti Lindh and Jarmo has been mostly with the oldest children doing electronics and innovations in teaching.
Svanborg is a deputy head teacher at Gnúpverjaskóli and has been teaching for 24 years. 8 years ago she found Innovation Education and she thought that this is what teaching was supposed to be about. The higher aims of Innovation Education helps the children build up their own lives. Svanborg used to teach English and Danish and she also used to work with the storyline method. She graduated from Gisli last year as a crafts teacher as well and has been teaching the crafts and Innovation Education in Gnúpverjaskóli.
Cathy Burke is a lecturer at University of Leeds in Childhood studies. She has a PhD in history, or rather political history. Where she used Frera’s ideas of that curriculum should work with problems, and the pedagogy of the oppressed that leads to change. She is very interested in the way that schools change and more to the point what stops these changes.
She also finished her Masters in web learning which makes her interested in this project and she is a part of the EERA network that she suggests would benefit from a Innovation Education forum.
Also Cathy ran a competition called The school I like in cooperation with the Guardian newspaper, which got children to send in their ideas about what their future school should look like and work.
Gísli Þorsteinsson is the assistant professor at Iceland University of Education, department of design and craft. He started teaching different subject, Danish and Icelandic with crafts in small schools in the rural parts of Iceland and gradually made his way back to Reykjavik where he taught at Foldaskóli till 1996 when he moved to the University. He has been active in Innovation Education from the start, he and Paul Johanson started the first teaching project wich was a summer school in innovation education in 1991. Gisli has formed with Rosa teaching materials in innovation education with the help of several institutions that sponsored the work. Gisli says that really that he has been educated by the children.
Gisli has been very active in technology and in slojd circles in Scandinavian projects, too many to talk about here.
Rósa Gunnarsdóttir has several hats in this project. First of all she is working with Gill Walsh and Jonathan Towers in Roundhay and other schools in Leeds in teaching Innovation Education to children in Young Inventors Societies. Secondly she works for the Iceland University of Education as an adjunct lecturer and project manager of the InnoEd project, and thirdly she is a research fellow at University of Leeds working with Cathy Burke on the project and hopefully more research in the field on Innovation Education.
Rósa started teaching in 1993 with Gisli at Foldaskóli and became active in the development
of Innovation Education early on. In 1997 she stopped teaching and left for Leeds to do a PhD in Innovation Education, defining the phenomenon, which she finished last December.
Introduction of work plan and peoples responsibilities
Gísli introduced the project and gave people the opportunity to react. He used a Porject information sheet shown below as an introduction. The information sheet was sent to Brussels as an introduction of the project which would be made into a booklet made available to all other EU projects and project participants. Some of you requested this paper to be included in the seminar report as it is short and concise and a good overview of the aims of the project.
Project’s information sheet
Full Project Title / InnoEd: Practical use of ODL and IT in Innovation EducationAcronym / InnoEd
Reference number / 90138-CP-1-2001-IS-MINERVA-M
Start date / Oct 2001
End date / Sept 2003
Summary: (see enclosed example)
InnoEd: Practical use of IT and ODL in Innovation Education is a project dedicated to establishing a community that nurtures the innovative spirit in children. A niche, where children and adults alike, are provided with tools and materials, and the necessary interactions for creative thoughts to become ideas and eventually products.
The project is set up in three stages.
First stage is the culture specific dimension and preparatory stage. Where the work will be aimed at finding suitable solutions to fit the existing educational surroundings in each country participating. Building on the existing experience and expertises in each country, sharing those experiences and structuring a flexible ODL environment for teachers and students and teacher training in the field of Innovation Education.