Detailed project plan of Alajärvi and Vimpeli Upper Secondary Schools.  Procedures for the teachers and students to be discussed.

Schedule

Before Christmas  our idea is to look for a suitable number of possible partner schools by using the help of our regional coordinators.  The two persons helping in our project are Counsellor for Education Paula Mattila (National Board of Education) and coordinator Eija Ruohomäki (project INTO that aims at advancing language learning in Finland).  They help us in networking and filling in applications and giving valuable information about national contacts. Eija Ruohomäki helped us send our project plan with a delegation to the Turkish Wide Minds conference in November to create contacts.

After Christmas we should fill in applications for Comenius by the 21^st of February.  At the same time it would be wise to plan for a preliminary get-together with the people responsible for the project abroad.  CIMO decides the schools that are accepted, and if we are on the list, we will begin the actual work in late September or early October, depending on the schedules of the participating schools.  In Finland we can use the money our government granted us for the preparations.  The project will last two years if there are no further successful activities after that.  Teachers and students may use spring term 2010 for discussing the procedures and other ideas that they might use later.

Contents

Regional co-operation between Alajärvi and Vimpeli started in 2008 when our schools participated in the National Forum of Children and Adolescents whose aim was to promote the activation of young people to take part in the decision-making in their community.  We have already had teaching between our schools in several subjects by using videoconference systems.  In Helsinki some of our national decision-makers got interested in the idea of this kind of close co-operation between two municipalities (called Järvi-Pohjanmaan yhteistoiminta-alue) that shared the same teaching guidelines, and they encouraged us to further develop the concept of teaching long distance.  When these ideas were passed on to the board that was responsible for giving grants, our concept seemed to be worth the interest, and we got the permission to continue work with the help of a national grant.  In Oulu International Co-operation and Networking Conference (November 16^th and 17^th this year) we met with our “supervisors” who gave us valuable information of how to go on and evolve.  They assured us that our plan is feasible and kindly promised extra help to carry it out.

Our plan is as follows (not the final version, but the one to be discussed with all the participants, teachers and students alike):  since autumn 2012 Vimpeli, Alajärvi and possibly two partner schools start to convey teaching to each other in all (or almost all) school subjects included in the school curriculum once a week.  Since we have around 30 teachers in our two upper secondary schools (aged 15-19), each teacher is responsible for only one lesson within the whole school year.  This way the burden is not too much for anyone, but still we have classes that promote teaching and co-operation and cultural interchange every week.  So each school sends one lesson every week, but also receives two or three lessons from the partner schools.  So, every week there are a lot of things going on.  These lessons will be passed to others “live”, but the material can be planned beforehand by all members of a particular group.  All this happens via a simple netbased programme (for example Adobe Connect Pro which we are licensed to use) which does not require a lot of investment and extra effort to learn.

Teaching by using a foreign language should not be feared.  Teachers should not feel extra tension or panic because he is only responsible for the contents of the lesson; if he feels up to it, he can teach in English or some other language, but if not, the students can help in preparations and with the language because we have a lot of potential and expertise in their language and proficiency skills.  The lesson might include normal frontal teaching, a slide show, photos, a short video clip, Powerpoint presentations, Word documents or some other types of media.

The lesson doesn’t have to be too complicated or technical.  Teachers should also have  a quite liberal choice in what they teach and they shouldn’t feel restricted by the course they are currently teaching.  In Finnish upper secondary schools the school year is normally divided into five or six periods.  Our school has six periods during which students choose about six different subjects.  It is also preferable if everybody includes in their teaching some characteristics of national or regional interest, which might be more interesting to the other participants because these themes give insight into the culture and focal points of everyone’s national education.  For example here we could choose local history, or the special characteristics of our lakes, we can teach Swedish in English, portray our national sports, do art performances, give music lessons with Finnish traditional songs, introduce our churches, museums and places of interest etc.

The contents of the lessons are “teacher-based” but “student-activated”.  When we as teachers get the information (based on the schedule planned together) where and when their lesson takes place, we can start working and refining the material beforehand according to everyone’s own interest.  Our networking conference in Oulu showed well how keen the students are to take part in the action when they get the right tools and subjects.  Upper secondary schools are great pools of student resources – in some cases they master the technology better than we.  One ambitious goal of the project is also to achieve and maintain an archive of lessons “for posterity”, and to use these entities later when the project is over.  For this all technical problems need to be solved, and maybe also some legal and moral matters how different countries allow their students to be filmed.

An integral part of conveying teaching and information is also the mobility that Comenius programmes offer.  No student would like to say they are involved in an international project unless they have a chance to visit.  These student/teacher exchange visits could be planned by using the same concept as in our teaching exchange.  In our countries we individually work on creating information packages, which will then be presented during the visits.  The rest of the programme can be planned by the host school after the project has started.  One possible way of acting could be to create teaching material with other schools on the spot, and then each country could bring this material back to be shown in their countries.  It is of great importance to make this a project in which everybody is involved, and not just make it the burden of language teachers or a selected few, because this kind of co-operation everybody could use the strong points of his interests and teaching  -  or pass it on to someone who could like it more if it is too overwhelming to carry out.

 Resources

Of course there are still many things to ponder about.  The guidelines of timetables should be agreed on.  It would be useful if all these were ready by the end of August if we are to begin in September or October.  In Finland this work is normally done in July, but many foreign schools have then just begun their holidays.  We can still plan ahead which subjects, teachers and key ideas can be included.  A common calendar could be filled in gradually to see how everything comes together.  Hopefully the use of technology won’t be a major hindrance because we already have quite a lot of knowhow. In spring 2012 while waiting for the partnerships to be approved we all could familiarize ourselves with the programmes in hand, so when we really start, everything will go smoothly.  It would be a shame if the contents suffered because of equipment and software.  That’s why we are considering international videoconference programmes that have been proved good in practise.  Furthermore, they are normally quite cheap, so no huge extra costs would arise.  Their international reputation also makes them compatible when considering choices.

We also have to take into consideration that students/teachers have enough time to prepare material.  Those having lots of knowledge beforehand can start and help others.  Each country should also guarantee a reasonable compensation for those who have to work lots more than some, if this situation ever arises.  It must be taken care of in each partner school individually because of the different school systems.  There have to be meetings and guidance, but since this project is all about sharing the work load and dividing it into smaller entities, no one should carry the burden alone.  What is also important is to give some sort of reward to the students who help because they cannot be given money.  More of this follows later.

Our school has a big selection of languages in hand – that this will also be guaranteed in the future is the task of the national INTO-project (http://intoilua.wordpress.com).  Language teachers and gifted pupils can help others in translations and in adapting the language part of the material to be passed forward.

Problem areas

There is a lot of overlapping in the text and especially in the subsections, but they are maybe understandable in this context since one can take a look at the themes from several angles.  Some problems may later become strengths and vice versa, so have patience with the flaws of this presentation at this stage – we are meant to solve them together.  Right now the expressed views may be limited and undeveloped because they represent the views of our small planning team.

An eternal problem in every project seems to be the contribution of everyone: how to motivate students and teachers to get involved so that the project will feel it is our own and not just the hobby of some selected few.  Supposedly the same problems are visible in the partner schools as well.  In addition to this we have to think of how we pass on relevant and interesting information of our own school systems that others have the strength to follow and we won’t scare the others away by trying to be too technical, too dry, too superior or spoil the show with a multimedia performance which looks awesome but lacks contents.  This doesn’t mean we have to reinvent the wheel as educators but we can rely on our own well established models that have been proven useful in our everyday work.

Mastering equipment, placing it right and learning to use it comfortably traditionally cause panic since they are associated with complexity and clumsiness to use.  That’s why gadgets and programmes should be a natural, integral part of teaching so that they could be “forgotten” when teaching.  In technical problems and their solutions why not trust out capable audiovisual teacher wizards and those students to whom controlling technology is not just self-evident but natural, easy and fun when they can help in passing on the information that was created. We saw some excellent examples of student inventiveness in our conference in Oulu.  We also believe that quite many teachers are eager to know how everything can be put together by using technology without it taking over.

Locally thinking, mastering equipment and software will also benefit the teaching between out Finnish upper secondary school and strengthen communication channels between local education authorities.  We have used videoconference to interchange teaching, but the new network programmes are still new to us.  More information of these can be found in the manufacturer’s website (for example www.adobe.com).  Despite their seemingly light appearance we can pass on video and sound, get into chats, create documents and share computer screens.  What you need is a computer, a wide-band connection, a web browser, and a Flash programme.  To hear someone speak a loudspeaker is needed.  This is how one manufacturer works, but there are other possible systems.

What’s the use of the whole project?  It is a problem if we do things just to appear active, but hopefully not a big one.  One could also think that action is always good because of all the activity it creates.  Our main idea behind everything is that in optimal circumstances technical expertise improves, activities promote two-way cultural interchange, we get further information of school systems in other countries, we bring students/teachers closer to each other, create new groups that spontaneously correspond on the Internet, give birth to new contacts, increase the satisfaction of normal school work, give a chance to visit other countries and schools, bring forth Finnish PISA expertise and give our National Board of Education feedback how this kind of teaching works and how it doesn’t.  The project in its most idealistic form also increases cooperation between colleagues, adds to regional planning and lets us pioneer in creating new pathways on individual and community levels. 

One big aim is to store all the information and material that we create for further use.  Here we have to take into account what kind of means we need for the storage.  In addition, we have to think of the legislation of each country separately because they might have different sets of rules how information can be used and how public it is without anyone suffering from loss of privacy.

One more thought to consider: will some subject fade into the background, or will we be able to deal with all subjects equally?  We also need to think which communication channels to use for planning between the partners.  A more acute problem is finding partners, but gradually we are getting there.  Interest has been shown from Turkey, Italy, Spain, France and their partnering schools in Austria.  Let’s see hoe the situation develops because we never know whose application gets rejected.  Some communication channels are also open towards Russian schools, but as you all know, they cannot be financed through Comenius funding, but we are looking for alternative ways to afford this.  The problems of different schedules in schools have to be synchronized, too.

Since our projects seems to be quite detailed and it is based on the wishes of our regional cooperation model and National Board of Education, the problem is finding a coordinating school.  Our original idea was to find an existing project to join, but the deeper we got into the idea, the better we realized that the best chance is to coordinate everything ourselves.  We will find the suitable persons and concepts to make this come true.  The concept is not completed, but we are getting there by trial and error and cutting away the bad models and patterns while we advance.

Strengths

Schools are filled with versatile and competent people who represent a miniature prism of society on both sides of the teacher’s desk.  This time we have the opportunity to offer extra dimensions to teachers’ work, showcase their dedication and specialization in certain subjects, “exploit” the hobbies and interests of the students and find out the talents we as teachers don’t necessarily have.  Another strong point is that the students have organised their lives to revolve around many types of social media, which would advance teaching at school as well: new contacts, new connections, new students starting studies abroad, new professional mobility within Europe, new strength to cross borders between European countries, new boundaries to be set and new ideas to find.

In your project themes emphasize national characteristics that might be of greater interest elsewhere.  You have areas which all the world knows, but also hidden beauty on many fields that is bursting to come out.  Sounds grand, but finding these hidden gems might be your contribution to the plans.  As mentioned before, nobody’s work load is unreasonable, so cooperate within similar subjects, integrate with themes that emerge, add music or art, your imagination is the limit.  Many students benefit from this kind of teaching as well because the lessons sent and received often go to different groups.

Rewarding

The ideal situation is that the process would be a reward in itself.  Extra value comes from the visits that are probably the most wanted perks of the project.  The visits give us a peek into a new culture and widen our horizons.  This videoconference teaching creates a new kind of concept whose benefits can only be seen when the project has been going on for some time.  If it works, all the participants have had their rewards and conquered their fears of technology in passing information onwards.

This teaching is also gratifying because it leaves an ample amount of material to be reviewed later.  For the students who are in the project should also be rewarded within schools.  Not everybody gets the chance to visit since there is no funding for all to travel, but those who have participated actively could be given grades or extra credit for the preparation of teaching material.  The work could also be a part of the final exam of each course, but this should be decided by each member school separately.  There is probably some need for the teachers to discuss this aspect in groups.  How teachers are rewarded is another matter altogether.

After the project

No project should be disposable.  There must be a plan to continue, to refine, to analyze it.  Our goals are twofold: the memories of the visits we did, and the archives that we collected.  As mentioned earlier, the evaluation of the project can be done after it has been going on for some time.  Then it is time to say whether it was worth it, has it become an ordinary part of everyday teaching, or has it just given birth to more grey hairs.  If everything goes according to plan, the venture can continue on its course in the coming years, with different partners maybe, without much help from the outside.  If this kind of style works, our future students could also see it in action.  If/When our partner schools change, we can again learn to know different schools and cultures, showcase our strengths, and even introduce the material we prepared previously.