This episode was truly phenomenal and definitely not least so because Tiina Sarisalmi made it all the way through even though she was running a fever! It’s amazing, the way an interesting discussion with enthusiastic colleagues makes you totally forget about tiredness or – apparently! – even being sick. But hey, everyone knows that we Finns have what it takes, right? After all, we’ve even got our very own, world famous signature word for this ‘grit’ thing :)
Learning is getting seriously phenomenal in Finland, even though the new Finnish core curriculum is absolutely not completely scrapping the subjects the way some major international newspapers suggested! The headlines like this one in The Independent turned out to be greatly exaggerated but, sure enough, the path that Finland has chosen includes cross-curricular projects – thematic, phenomenon based work – in all schools in near future. This is the recipe in Finland after the less-perfect PISA scores last time, instead of focusing even more on the separate subjects: more of authentic work, less of traditional school assignments. Makes very good sense to me.
Once again, we also touched base on international work; actually not surprising since this time all of us panel participants are European Union eTwinning Ambassadors! We agreed on that international school projects should be a natural part of the curriculum; this is something that every school should be doing these days. Why not guarantee that all the students get the chance to participate in international collaboration during their years at school? This is something I will definitely suggest to my principal.
We had also a bit of tech trouble, again, but hey – it’s part of the deal and we got back to business pretty soon. In fact, it turned out that we had a hard time wrapping up the discussion in the end; not quite unheard of, especially when Marilina and Helene are with us in the panel!
Prefer audio-only? Just listening to the good stuff can be pretty smart since it works fine, enjoying the discussion while doing something else that doesn’t need your full attention. Grab the mp3 file or listen on the web here.
Thank you all and see you soon On Air!
DViS: Sverige för Ukraina #se4ua 