As an educator, I have often wondered about Finland’s educational system. For my entire life, Finland ranked #1. What are they doing that makes their system superior to ours? Today was my lucky day! I heard from Finnish students, teachers and administrators all talking about their system. Using Google hangouts, a video chat room for up to ten people, and twitter I participated in this global discussion. It was fabulous. I started to record the session a little late. I have posted the video below. Twitter quotes below from the #pennfinn13 hashtag will give you some of the highlights from the discussion:
TWITTER feed from some of the people I follow who were posting to #pennfinn13:
- “Schools in Finland uses Facebook and Twitter as SM tools to share messages about schools.” @JohnFritzky
- “Trust is a common theme in Finnish Ed…admin, teachers, students and parents all trust each other.” @stumpteacher
- “Students in Finland says there is a personal relationship between Students & Teachers. Students actually had a class on their own when Teacher couldn’t attend.” @JohnFritzky
- “Now compare Finland’s successful methods to US common core assessment reqs and teacher eval systems.” @lisadavis
- “Finland system appears to be built on trust and individualization. US built on competition and common core.” @stumpteacher
- “Challenge to Finland –> Teachers and Administrators don’t want to stop and define why they are so great, but want to discover how to improve.” @JohnFritzky
- “Safe environment for risk taking – from students to teachers.” @gpescatore25
-“To a US student education in Finland sounds like a Utopia” @vickigraf2
Google Hangout Video (most of it!)
Link to Penn-Finn learnings 2013 edutopia post: Link here