From Ideas Towards Something Concrete

During past few weeks we have had few team meetings where we have started to turn our ideas toward something concrete. The direction we have now chosen is to start create learning environment for the teachers, kind of a virtual classroom. The aim is to build a short online course what would be implemented on the virtual environment.

Menglin and Yang are now working to start code a first version of web page so we would be able to present our idea within more than just words. Petra is also helping them with graphical design. Ngoc is giving a thought for the revenue logic at how to turn idea profitable. Sami and Maristella are concentrating to create learning model and content for a demo.

Mapping Up The Ideas

First Demola milestones are behind: Demola Jam to learn how to build value for a product and playbook meeting where our team, responsible teachers and project partner gathered together to see what was the status of our project.

During the Demola Jam session our team had a possibility to work out what are the values in the project and for who things are valuable because different stakeholders have some values similar, but also some that are valuable for only to certain stakeholder. To be able to finish this project with success, we need to be able to create something that pleases all stakeholders.

Playbook was filled during the Demola Jam and rest of the weekend. It became our first concrete written tool which guides us onward while working in this project. Of course post it notes can’t be counted on this one because until this far we had already become good friends with those post it notes.

With filled playbook, it was much easily to do prepare PowerPoint presentation about the project. This presentation was looked through on Tuesday 14.10. in our Playbook meeting which was coordinated but our facilitator, Jere. It included different approaches how to start tackle the problem given to us and it was both partly accepted and partly criticized which is a really good thing because it helped us also approach our problem in different views.

As a result of around two hour long playbook meeting we put (lots of) post it notes on the wall and that way mind mapped our project through according to Demola cycle thinking model. Now the ideas created so far have been literally put on the wall so now we are moving towards something a bit more concrete and see how the project will start to build in.

This is everyone’s own estimation of project hours spent so far:

Megnling Xu: 24hrs

Yang Dan: 24 hrs

Ngoc Nguyen: 20 hrs

Petra Mether: 23 hrs

Maristella Gabardo: 23hrs
Sami Puttonen: 20-25hrs

Getting Started

Demola gathered us all made us a team to start solving out a problem given us by a Learning Scoop, which is described on previous blog text. We have interesting international team of six persons from four different countries and various of skills in different areas. The members of our team and their area of knowledge are following: 

Sami Puttonen, Finland, Education ... Petra Mether, Finland, Graphical Desing ... Maristella Gabardo, Brazil, Teaching ... Yang Dan, China, Coding ... Mengling Xu, China, Coding ... Ngoc Nguyen, Vietnam, Business.

So it all actually got started in Monday 29.9.2014 when we had an initial meeting with both,  our facilitator (Jere Wessman) and our project partner (Learning Scoop). During that meeting we had an oppoturnity for a dialog with our project partner to hear more about them and their expectation toward our project. Abour an hour long meeting made things a bit more clear and also made us all realize that we are working with the very broad topic. That's why we thought to put our brains to work for a week and decided to set up another meeting for our team on Tuesday 7.10. afternoon. The agenda for that meeting was for everyone to search and gather different kind of ideas how to start approach this project case and then mix them all together to see what we got. 

Meanwhile during the week we did set up a facebook group and google drive which would be used as a working platforms for us on those times when it is not possible to have the whole team around the same table. Learning Scoop was arranging on Tue 7.10. at the morning a kick off event for educational specialists and their partners where our team was also invited. Sami participated on that event, which was very useful as it was loaded full of information related to todays situation about educations internationalization to become a global product on markets.

That same Tue 7.10. afternoon we had our own team meeting to see what are all those things we had been able to gather during the week. On our meeting we starter to fill up the playbook (project plan) form to have things in structualized way. Besides just filling the form we had good conversation about ideas on our project, still in a rather broad sense. There have been (and still are) Demola workshops about how to create value on project and on Saturday Demola Jam event to have some tools, tips and work out with a team on our project. So after these our all ideas and thoughts will be written down on a "playbook" form and we will have a vision what kind of content we are targeting to have in our project.

The Project Case To Be Solved

As being now one of the students who are participating on Demola Tampere project during Autumn 2014, where the team was built solve following case for the project partner, Learning Scoop:

The Brief:

We want to start building a new learning environment from visualizing everyday life in the Finnish classrooms, opening up the interaction and linking these to the principals and theories behind Finnish basic education.

The vision behind Finn Scoop is to build a learning environment with gamified elements; possibility to surf easily and find exciting things, deepen your knowledge gradually and finally get real certificate, find community of learners and have face-to-face training workshops etc. Sustainable service needs an meaningful business logic: something exciting for free, something for small money and possibility to dive deep and get a real certificate with real payment.

Backround:

The Finnish basic education is world famous. One could say that Finnish basic education is a brand, mostly because of the exceptional PISA results. People around the world want to learn, to hear and to see more of the Finnish basic education and they are ready to pay for it. We need new ways to meet this demand, new tools that help us to open everyday life in our schools, tools that are scalable and work also with the big volume.

Foreign education visitors always want to experience what is happening in the Finnish classrooms. School visits are important, but visitors inevitably disturb the classroom work, they do not understand the interaction while communication is in Finnish and the possibility for reflection comes often too late if at all. Furthermore, only a limited number of teachers can attend the school visits at one time.

Learning Scoop is a new learning co-operative of Opinpaja ltd and Sininen Kolmio ltd. We are experts in the Finnish education and we are looking for new ways to work  in the international field of further education of teachers, trainers and pedagogical developers. We believe that learning can be empowering, fun and it is the best way to change the world.

Transnational education (education export) is a growing business in Finland and a huge business globally. One needs to get involved now! 

The Solution:

Our problem is how to visualize Finnish basic education classroom and it’s practices. The aim is to create a demo v of the visualization possibilities of the Finnish basic education, but also develop the bigger picture of the new learning environment and its revenue logic. After Demola project we want to seek funding for developing this new kind of learning environment.

We are looking for open minded people with updated (and beyond) ideas of possibilities of Internet. We want to explore the world of games and the possibilities of Internet and how to build such systems. We are looking for possible business cases and we need fresh ideas to help with the revenue logic. We need visualists with the sense for international customers. We value all kind of fresh ideas. We believe deeply in cross disciplinary work and ideas.