Innovative Education Council was established in 2017 with an aim to promote development of the much needed 21st century skills that students require to become responsible and contributing members of the society. At the time Finland had just rolled out it’s new curriculum which included coding starting from Grade 1 onwards. Primary school teachers were searching for easy and fun to use tools which will help them save time to teach this complex topic to the children in an interesting way. While there existed many solutions for the pre-primary and post-primary school age going students there was a lack of tools for primary school age group.
With the vision to help develop the logical thinking skills for primary school students and teach them basics of programming logic, e-learning solution Opin was co-created together with the teachers from the Espoo International School, sponsored by the City of Espoo’s KYKY Living Lab program for partnership between the Finnish schools and the companies. Solution partners included Microsoft who is well known to support the STEAM based educational innovations globally.
Phenomena based learning in a community setting with an instructor led environment also enables group work to promote well being of young students in terms of cyber security, curb online bullying, web privacy, digital well-being and safety.
Mahatma Gandhi International School (MGIS) Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat, a well known school across India for it’s unique program for pioneering experimental education was the first school to pilot the solution in India and provide valuable feedback to help prepare for scaling across the launch market. MindChamp Learning Solutions, based out of Mumbai, focus on enabling girls in technology by teaching grade 3 to 8 to code are among the first partners to take the Opin solution across all the major cities in India.
