Finland may be less ostentatiously hipster
than its Scandinavian neighbors but it is filled with forward-thinking and
super-smart people. To mark 100 years of independence (from Russia), Finland is
embarking on a wave of celebrations in 2017, one of which is HundrED, a bold
project that aims to advance and scale innovation in education, initially in
Finland but with global ambitions.
The initiative began in late 2015 when
Finnish schools and educators were invited to submit their ideas for
experiments to be trialed over the course of one school year. More than 700
hundred schools and organizations applied and in April last year, the
successful applicants were announced and trials have been ongoing across the
2016/17 academic year.
These trials are being rigorously
documented, measured and assessed with the overall aim of them being
beautifully packaged on the HundrED platform, so that educators anywhere can
access them.
The man behind HundrED, Saku Tuominen, who
refers to himself as a "recovering TV producer", has, for the last
three years, been directing his 25-year experience in creativity and innovation
at the education sector. HundrED is the expression of his background in a new
arena. He explains the overall vision, "Our goal is to be the deep experts
in the world, who know what’s out there [in education innovation], what’s
working and which ideas could be scaled."
Tuominen says there is no shortage of
innovation in the sector but what is lacking is a way for those ideas and
initiatives to be packaged so that they are accessible, easy to follow and
furthermore, have a fair chance of spreading.
This platform approach, which effectively
amounts to branding, is key to HundrED. Tuominen says, "We aim to make
everything beautiful, everything understandable, so that any teacher, in
Manchester, in Bangladesh, in Singapore, in San Francisco, can have access to
the best education innovations globally. So that they can clearly see what the
idea is, what resources are needed, and the dos and don’ts. For us, one key area
is recognizing the innovations but just as important is the packaging
part."
Finland has long been recognized as having
one of the world’s finest education systems, it topped the OECD’s international
results table in 2000, 2003 and 2006. The country’s centenary provided the
perfect opportunity for an education themed initiative on this scale. Tuominen
wanted to create something bold and impactful so pitched his vision to the
government and the organization responsible for centenary celebrations, framing
HundrED as a way to think about and prepare for the next 100 years of
education, creating something better based on the excellence the country
already has.
Tuominen says, "The world is changing
extremely fast and schools need to change as well, but it’s not an easy task
because, all over the world, education is happening in silos. Every country is
a silo, every state is a silo, every city is a silo and every school is a silo.
There are gatekeepers everywhere, so it is complicated to make change happen.
"Our idea is that there are a huge
number of creative things that happen in classrooms all over the world but the
problem is that practically no one knows about them, so, what if our mission is
to recognize them, document them, evaluate them and package them in a
beautiful, simple way and then help to make them spread?"
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