The third annual Helsinki Education Week will be held November 2nd-6th and will coincide with the HundrED Innovation Summit. The event will be completely online and completely free!
Helsinki Education Week has been organized by the City of Helsinki’s Education Division in collaboration with HundrED since 2017. This year over 160 event proposals were submitted to Helsinki Education Week, of which more than 100 were selected for the program.
This year’s theme is Learning by Design. The year 2020 has broken many barriers in education. It has been a demanding year, requiring exceptional skills to modify and adapt practices and solutions for the evolving situation. It has challenged both learners and experts working within the education sector. Therefore, this year’s program emphasizes cooperation, well-being, and e-learning. The program targets different education stakeholders from teachers and other education professionals to children, student groups, parents, and guardians – essentially, anyone interested in learning and its development. Helsinki Education Week aims to highlight the work that has supported and increased learner engagement and activity over the course of the last year.
The Helsinki Education Week production team has selected events proposals, which are inspiring and best suited for the theme. In addition to Finnish and Swedish events, this year’s program includes over 30 English language events. The week’s events are divided into four categories:
- Hands-On: Active events consisting of workshops and activities ranging from virtual museum visits to joint origami workshops.
- Dialogue: Discussion sessions focused on the exchange of experiences about language learning and sustainable development, for example.
- Network: Designated networking sessions, where you can network with both Finnish and international educational organizations, and learn more about Finnish institutions like Stadin AO, the Helsinki Vocational College, and Adult Institute.
- Explore: Events that delve into different educational innovations and learning environments. These events offer the chance to meet other learners from around the world and to learn more about evaluation tools or means for artistic expression.
We are also pleased to announce that many of the events this year come directly from the HundrED Community! You can find a summary of the types of events and specific session details below.
1. Themed Sessions with HundrED Innovators
A select group of HundrED Innovators and global partners will be delivering and hosting more than 20 virtual events throughout the Helsinki Education Week, with the help of experts from the Helsinki Education Sector. These events highlight innovative, international practices and solutions within four themes: Learning by Design, Literacy Skills, Bilingual Education, and Student Wellbeing.
Ranging from fun and engaging sessions for groups of learners, such as AimHi’s Live Lessons and Chatta in the Classroom – to exciting webinars for educators and leaders on Multilingual Kamishibaï, Family Engagement, and the Chatta Approach – to interactive workshops for both learners and adults, encompassing Stories Across Borders, Art in the times of Corona and a Project FUEL Workshop – to family engagement experiences, where parents and their kids build Minirooms and do Stop motion animation together – these events will surely be adding value to classrooms, schools and homes across Helsinki, Finland, and the world!
2. HundrED Masterclasses
HundrED Spotlight on Bilingual Education
On Tuesday, November 3rd there will be a special event for our HundrED Spotlight on Bilingual Education, created in partnership with the Swedish Cultural Foundation. This event will focus on practical tips and ideas to enrich language learning in your classroom. We have invited some of the selected innovators from the report to share their work and offer tangible and effective solutions to increasing awareness and interest in language learning. The experts include in no particular order:
- Professor Paul Seedhouse (Newcastle University) presenting Linguacuisine from the United Kingdom,
- Dr. Ellen-Rose Kambel (Rutu Foundation) presenting Language Friendly School from the Netherlands,
- Steven Renata (CEO) and Jill Tattersall (Director) presenting Kiwa Digital from New Zealand,
- Jaan Siitonen (Project Leader) presenting the Language Ambassadors from Finland.
Come join us for this dynamic session that will leave you inspired and connected to bilingual experts from around the world. You might even learn a new recipe or two! You can register for the Spotlight on Bilingual Education here.
Student Wellbeing
The program will also offer a unique opportunity for educators and students to come together and co-create the norms centered around student wellbeing. The Student Wellbeing: A Change to Co-Create a New Norm Event hosted by the 9th US Youth Observer to the United Nations, Dustin Liu, offers a chance for students, teachers & parents to join together in a discussion around the future of education.
The event will start with a panel discussion where students from the Helsinki Youth Council and the HundrED Youth Ambassador Network will share their experiences of the pandemic, its impact on their lives, and their asks from the adults in their environment. Directly after, we will jump into a group conversation with students, adults, and parents to discuss how we can collectively move forward through an online version of World Cafe.
#WhatIf We Reimage Education from Dream a Dream
The #WhatIf we Reimagine Education Together Workshop is an invitation to take a pause, stay in the moment for a while, and use this opportunity to reimagine ourselves, our education system, and our world post-covid. There is a definite need to re-imagine the role that we as schools and teachers play in the life of children with the entire ecosystem becoming trauma-responsive. Only then can we hope to overcome the impact of this crisis in a sustained manner.
This session will take a process-oriented and facilitative approach with activities that deepen self-reflection. Let us not allow ourselves or the school systems to go back to ‘business as usual’ at the end of this crisis.
The Finnish Way of Learning
This Masterclass on the Finnish Way of Learning is hosted by Derek Bartels, HundrED Country Lead and Director of Innovation & Technology for the Lutheran Education System of Schools in Qld Australia, and Kim Powell, HundrED Ambassador and Education Lead - Innovation for Lutheran Education Vic, NSW and Tas.
This session involves a guided discussion between Finnish and Australian Educators and Students to highlight the Finnish Ways of Schooling and Learning. Some of the themes and topics to be explored: The week in the life of a teacher in Helsinki, What does learning look like for students, Schooling in Finland has fewer state tests, among other things.
3. Other Community-Led Events to Watch Out For
- Debate: A journey for all - Hosted by two of our HundrED Youth Ambassadors, the objective of this event is to have an open and intercultural dialogue regarding the implementation of debate, emphasizing its benefits for society.
- Moving & Learning Works & Plays -This event will explore the Physically Active Learning (PAL)method for learning Mathematics and English. It will help you take learning beyond the classroom walls with 'Move & Learn' approaches. This is a practical workshop with ideas and activities to do now, the next day, and beyond.
- Link Online Learners - This event will be hosted by Link Online Learners (LOL), an organization that facilitates a series of weekly live link-ups between young people of different cultures from all around the world. Join this season to learn more and connect with learners from around the world.
- Sourced Design: Putting Vitality at the Center of Educational Design -In this dialogue, Dr. Jenny Finn co-founder of Springhouse and Sourced Design, and teenage learners from the case study will present on the five principles, share about the Education Design Lab, and will invite dialogue with participants about bringing vitality back to the center of educational design.
- Designing learning experiences to encourage the development of Skills, Processes & Watermarks - This event will be a dialogue with a potential explore session hosted by the teachers, researchers and students at the Royal Academy, a residential school in Bhutan, along with the innovator of the Five Areas of Development curriculum and the Director of the Royal Academy, Arun Kapur.
As you can see there is an event for everyone at this year’s Helsinki Education Week. You can check out the full program list here. We hope to see you there! Also, don't forget to register for the free HundrED Innovation Summit that will take place concurrently on November 4th-6th. Register here.
