The title of this post is taken from an information leaflet describing the work of the Helsinki Media Centre. Liisa Huovinen, the leader of the centre gave me a guided tour of this amazing place which has fully-equipped sound recording and video production studios as well as ICT facilities. The media centre, part of the city education department provides support and training for schools and teachers in all aspects of using technology. Their website explains more about their work, and includes a great introductory video….

Liisa explained in some detail how the centre works to support the development of ICT in schools. She explained some of their past and present projects, including their new VLE (very similar to GLOW). This uses the Norwegian developed ‘Fronter’ software to create a flexible and versatile learning platform for all schools in Helsinki. Its also used in London. If you want to know more, check it out on….

http://fronter.info/com/

The centre works with schools on a consultancy basis, first engaging with the school’s leaders, and then helping them to set their ICT goals, manage the change, and provide training both on the technology and the pedagogy involved for the school and administrative staff. They can help schools to link up (for benchmarking purposes) and identify specialist trainers (who may be experienced teachers from other schools). It is this type of focused, technological and pedagogical support that has driven forward the transformation of teaching and learning in Finnish schools and indeed continues to do so.

As with my discussions at the National Board of Education earlier in the week, I was struck by the level of importance attached to the training and support for schools and teachers, particularly the emphasis on the pedagogics involved in teaching with ICT. I’m talking here about experienced teachers who still teach providing training for others in the new classroom practices which actually work successfully to enhance teaching and learning. These decisions, taken at national and city/LA level appear to have translated into good practice in Finland’s schools (at least if you consider the latest PISA rankings). If you think about our own system in Scotland, might there be too much emphasis on the technology rather than the pedagogy ? And does the roll-out of GLOW need much more input at least at local level in schools towards training teachers to use it effectively ? Personally, I think this is where GLOW will either stand or fall and the pressure in schools for ‘efficiency’ savings at the same time as the introduction of such a potentially transformative initiative like GLOW could be seen as rather short-sighted and a false economy at that.
Time, as always, will tell.