MiniMikkeli - Puheenvuoroja & kutsu

What are you doing about it?

As a teacher it´s my responsibility to help pupils to find their strengths; shy, noisy, irritating, restless, cheeky, bullying, outspoken...you know who I´m talking about. Especially these pupils should get the experience that they are respected as humans. It´s the actions that are not accepted not the child.
It´s too often heard " that teacher didn´t like me" instead "that teacher did no like my actions".  Gradually the sound-self esteem falls into  pieces for the lack of exact feedback. And those pieces are hard to get back together.  Through real dialog pupils can be seen as precious ones as they are. Information and communications technology (ICT) gives one new way to be heard for pupils

 Enjoy the real power of difference.

 The stories behind the faces can be heard if we want to.

 Photos of exhibition "Me and myself; self-image"
Town Hall of Mikkeli, 2013

                      " I wanna be a good friend  to
                        everyone and encourage
                        them with their dreams"
                        (photo text)
                       
                       Are we teachers doing that?                                    

Better and better; pupils are ready to work hard for outcomes.

It´s often heard and read that working with ICT makes pupils restless and shortsighted but once again through this  entrepreneurship project I have seen how they want to do better and better. They are ready to refine their outcome hours to make it look like they have planned.  They watch each other´s   projects and talk about them. Through this they come up with new ideas and carry out their new vision. And the power in ICT working; it gives the possibility easily refine over and over. And that´s why using ICT is so invigorating. An example down below. It can easily be figured out that it has taken hours to complete this part of project.

    

                                         
                                         











This is the chosen one.

And this one they turned down.

U2JumpIn! The PopUp day is near!

Our business idea; AA-Cafe, Cake heaven

Advert by Arttu, Aleksi and Topi; AA-Cafe

Cake Heaven by Aava and Lotta

Play Store by Julius, Jere and Teemu

More business ideas

Olivia, Lotta and Moona created their advert on their freetime.

Check out their blog;http://www.namumaku.blogspot.fi/

Interview of an entrepreneur

Advert of the Vipeltäjät

Interviewing the entrepreneur

I can if I´m trusted; entrepreneurship is fun!

This week has once again shown how amazing pupils can be; they plan, create, work together. Real joy of learning. Enthusiasm is an incredible strength! This time our phenomenon based learning focused on entrepreneurship. Pupils had a chance to create their own enterprises with business plans and plans for marketing; like logos, adverts etc. You can watch few of them down below. 
Here you can find our ideas for study entrepreneurship.  The pupil-created content is a good example how creativity can be supported in the school. Learning can be invigorating.

                

                                                           

We did it: the best EU-project in Finland 2001 (1998-2001); phenomenon-based social and emotional learning. Yle made a document of the process of the first year; Hug me.

 Through the phenomenon-based  social and emotional learning (1998-2001) project pupils were guided to face their own different kind of  feelings; joy, love, fear, humour ( Hug Me, Face Your Fears and Smile) by the means of art education. We worked together with Austria; Uebelbach, France; Feins and Czech Republic; Nejdek. It was possible  to study like this for I used already then phenomenon-based learning process with my pupils: I call it postmix-model for I have mixed my own ideas with Montessori, Dewey, Freinet, ideas of emotional intelligence etc.  This process I describe in my licentiate thesis 2005. My passion is still improving the teaching methods. Now I working with my Ph.D thesis of learner-created content. You can follow this work on this blog.

We gave 1998-2001 for about 300 children a possibility to take part to different kind of workshops involving different kind of  feelings during those years. And f.ex. over 500 dolls were created  during the first year  Hug Me. It takes whole community; parents and teachers  to guide children to find their own place in this world.

What are they doing now? There are artists, teachers, engineers, screenwriters etc. How do I know? For I´m still chatting with many of  them in Facebook:)

During these three years they faced and created their own emotional world. We as teachers were there to make it possible; gave them the tools to work with; cameras, materials to work with but the children were the creators. What a wonderful journey we had! And we made our first materials to net for everyone to get inspired through our ideas! Yes 17 years ago!

Video below; 17 years ago with one camera and no editing.  Now the girl behind the camera       Niitty Forsstenis is studying to be film director and screenwriter, three of the girls are teachers Maiju

Eerikäinen, Sini-Tuisku Löhönen and Elina Hölttä and Marika Auvinen is Sales Promotion Officer. 

                                                                                                                           

Babies; storytelling before digital time. Girls were 9 years old and made the film in English.

 Opening of exhibition Hug me In the Art Museum of Mikkeli

CIMO; Nina Rekola; Head of Unit of General education:"Hug me-project is high quality itinerant  project that strengthens the human agency of children and speaks for tolerance by letting the pupils to tell their story through dolls"

The more the merrier!

Joy of learning; please touch the photo to read more of my ideas.

Our business idea; Jak-Film.

Three boys on my class spent 8 hours during their free time creating this advert for their entrepreneurship project. Their business idea is to create adverts for companies.
Through this project it is once again proved that pupils are willing to devote for studying if they have a possibility to affect how and where they study. Learning can be an interesting journey if we teachers allow it.

Learning landscapes.

Learning landscapes

Phenomenon based learning

Our business idea: CupCafe; designed by Anni, Jonna, Maiju and Ella

This advert was done on girls own backyard. And spent to it about 6 hours; planning, filming, editing...                                                                                                                                       

Recruitment for CupCafe

Our business idea; Scooter trainers; designed by Marcus, Otto, Werneri and Tatu

First steps as entrepreneurs two years ago