The two-day trip to Espoo is now complete. I took 5.42 morning train from Kuopio, because I finished work the previous evening at 10 pm, so the obvious result was tiredness. But I did contrubute and learn during the camp.
I think I expected more teaching from the experts, but it was us on the first day to present the pitches, and then the SWOT's. The best parts were the Work application game virtual version contest, as well as sharing the networks and our entrepreneurship experiences with the 1st-year business students. I have myself received 4-month training course on work application skills, marketing and productizing my experience, and I have applied for work and worked as a freelancer for the past 3 years, so I have accumulated experiences to share. About the game contest, it was awesome that our contributions were wanted and appreciated.
Few thoughts of critique towards the content, though. The 2-day session was about ideas how to teach vocational students entrepreneurship, and how it is taught elsewhere. Now, this is great, and the vocational students are an ideal target group. However, let's be realistic. Here are some hard facts.
1. Vocational students in arts (music, artisans etc). have difficulty of finding employment, whether in companies, orchestras, as musicians or as self-employed entrepreneurs. We will see what is the impact when 1,000 vocation teachers will lose their jobs, in this sector outside the capital area, and the jobs/study places will be transferred to nursing in the capital area. Are the students give a realistic idea and the hard facts of what entrepreneurship is?
2. A high percentage of new firms will not make a two-year mark, in other words most companies will never be successful. And just look at Kermansavi and other long-term Finnish companies now. Gone. In addition, during these crucial first years, most entrepreneurs will need to work long days from morning till evening, day in and day out.
3. A female entrepreneur's average income is under 2,000 euros per month. This was published recently in a women's magazine. One needs to realize that an entrepreneur must earn three times more than what will be left as the net income after taxes, social insurance expenses, rents, equipment, tools, materials, salaries to others, accountant, ad agency, running the web site, and other costs.
4. If you cannot find work in your own field or in any other field, which is the reality in Finland, the options after that are
a) to draw unemployment benefit, apply for work and wait
b) study and get more qualifications or a new profession
c) start writing a dissertation (which requires university degree and also funding, so not very likely for vocational students or graduates)
d) become an entrepreneur
Some people try entrepreneurship because there are no other options left. In one way or another I'm doing all the above now after having been a jobseeker since summer 2009. I think that a vocation education in a practical field is one of the best investments one can make, to secure employment. The companies have beautiful rhetoric in speeches and job announcement about valuing education, networking, linguistic skills, work experience, and other skills. This is all true in this sense: without the specific degree or education (such as a social worker, painter, can mechanic) you cannot get work, not matter how experienced or qualified you are. The vocational school still have a reasonable amount of funds for their teachers (the ones who are not being cut off), so there is a lot of hope in vocation education. About the entrepreneurship, I don't know.
maanantai 26. marraskuuta 2012
VS4
The final presentation is now over, or that what I thought, since we discovered instantly that will be begin working on Educational Science already in 2 weeks. Anyway, this last virtual day on vocation science was the most interesting. I escaped the banging and dust clouds of our home-turned-into-a-construction-site to a friend's apartment for the virtual session.
First we learned about vocational education for special-needs students. According to the Review of Education in 2007 report Finland holds the world record in the quantity of special education given students in basic education (Kivirauma & Ruoho: Excellence Through Special Education? Lessons from the Finnish School Reform, p. 288). In addition, Finnish special educators have a leading status among the OECD countries (p. 289). It is a well-known fact that there is a high number of students who are not feeling well physically, emotionally, and mentally. Part of them require special attention and special education measures. For example in my lower secondary school days, there was a special group of students with poor academic performance and ill behavior, who were on so called observation class (tarkkailuluokka). I believe they had learning difficulties and some social issues, and a small group of about 6 gave them a change to get through the school system. While as a trend, children, youth, and adult not feeling well, the ultimate solution is not to have more special education. It treats the symptoms, and it is of course necessary, but the society should address the problems behind the low survival skills. Many children have to spend their afternoons alone without adult/ parental care and attention, and there is hardly anyone to share with things. In Finland independence is one of the key virtues since a baby starts learning and practicing skills, such as holding a spoon and dressing himself, so needing someone's help or attention is seen as weakness. This leads towards loneliness and even social exclusion. This is alarming especially among boys and men, who are raised to believe that showing emotions and talking about them is humiliating and should be avoided (not to mention dancing or singing). Showing emotions is allowed only in an ice-hockey match or when one is drunk. This is very sad. The society should take more measures in the well-being of its citizens, and maybe then special education would be less needed.
Satu made a great work and gave practical examples on how to approach and address this issue, when we are dealing with special-needs students. This does not only refer to disabled students, but also to ones with learning disabilities, or some other trauma or difficult conditions, which makes studying challenging.
We had a fruitful discussion on how to we can deal with special problems, such as when a student has recurring absences, tardies, or is (too) tired to study and the academic performance suffers. This brings to mind an American coed of mine when we studied abroad. The college had a mold problem but it had not been addressed efficiently. Mold was present in the library, gym, showers, and dorms. My coed had respiratory problems had missed classes because of this. The school had policy that you could only miss a few classes in order to make the credits and graduate. Because of too many absences, she had been threatened that she will not be allowed to graduate. Unfortunately the school tended to address any exception to rules by threatening this or that in order to control the students. This is one example where the issue was not addressed properly. Thankfully we are more flexible in Finland and also sensitive to all kinds of special needs, including dietary restrictions. In the same school there was another girl who had high cholesterol, but the school did not provide special diet meals for her, even though we had to pay for tuition and board, including the meals. The girl's mother had to cook her meals and she would bring them to school after each weekend.
I summary, many special situation can be handled with good communication between the teacher/tutor and the student concerned. We also discussed whether is the teacher's or student counselor's role to talk to the students and try to find solutions, and the conclusion was that both have their part to play.
Then followed a Mars presentation on combining vocation education and entrepreneurship. The Ministry of Education has outlined guidelines of entrepreneur education, and it is mandatory within the EU (Entrepreneurship Education in School in Europe: National Strategies, Curricula and Learning Outcomes, March 2012). According to this, entrepreneurship education is one of the main focuses during the current five-year period (2011-2016) (p. 46), and perhaps this is why also we as teachers-to-be also learn about this. I put together a video of our ongoing renovation project. We have two vocation students working under an apprenticeship contract, painting and putting wallpaper. There are benefits for all: the students see real-life work situations in a genuine setting and get good references from the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur gets affordable (free) labour, so they can offer construction projects in a competitive price. The client has reduced costs since the students do part of the work.
The third presentation was about entrepreneurship. We had a fun quiz, learned about key competencies, and how entrepreneurship education can be integrated into vocation teaching. This is a good background to go into EduPreneur boot camp.
First we learned about vocational education for special-needs students. According to the Review of Education in 2007 report Finland holds the world record in the quantity of special education given students in basic education (Kivirauma & Ruoho: Excellence Through Special Education? Lessons from the Finnish School Reform, p. 288). In addition, Finnish special educators have a leading status among the OECD countries (p. 289). It is a well-known fact that there is a high number of students who are not feeling well physically, emotionally, and mentally. Part of them require special attention and special education measures. For example in my lower secondary school days, there was a special group of students with poor academic performance and ill behavior, who were on so called observation class (tarkkailuluokka). I believe they had learning difficulties and some social issues, and a small group of about 6 gave them a change to get through the school system. While as a trend, children, youth, and adult not feeling well, the ultimate solution is not to have more special education. It treats the symptoms, and it is of course necessary, but the society should address the problems behind the low survival skills. Many children have to spend their afternoons alone without adult/ parental care and attention, and there is hardly anyone to share with things. In Finland independence is one of the key virtues since a baby starts learning and practicing skills, such as holding a spoon and dressing himself, so needing someone's help or attention is seen as weakness. This leads towards loneliness and even social exclusion. This is alarming especially among boys and men, who are raised to believe that showing emotions and talking about them is humiliating and should be avoided (not to mention dancing or singing). Showing emotions is allowed only in an ice-hockey match or when one is drunk. This is very sad. The society should take more measures in the well-being of its citizens, and maybe then special education would be less needed.
Satu made a great work and gave practical examples on how to approach and address this issue, when we are dealing with special-needs students. This does not only refer to disabled students, but also to ones with learning disabilities, or some other trauma or difficult conditions, which makes studying challenging.
We had a fruitful discussion on how to we can deal with special problems, such as when a student has recurring absences, tardies, or is (too) tired to study and the academic performance suffers. This brings to mind an American coed of mine when we studied abroad. The college had a mold problem but it had not been addressed efficiently. Mold was present in the library, gym, showers, and dorms. My coed had respiratory problems had missed classes because of this. The school had policy that you could only miss a few classes in order to make the credits and graduate. Because of too many absences, she had been threatened that she will not be allowed to graduate. Unfortunately the school tended to address any exception to rules by threatening this or that in order to control the students. This is one example where the issue was not addressed properly. Thankfully we are more flexible in Finland and also sensitive to all kinds of special needs, including dietary restrictions. In the same school there was another girl who had high cholesterol, but the school did not provide special diet meals for her, even though we had to pay for tuition and board, including the meals. The girl's mother had to cook her meals and she would bring them to school after each weekend.
I summary, many special situation can be handled with good communication between the teacher/tutor and the student concerned. We also discussed whether is the teacher's or student counselor's role to talk to the students and try to find solutions, and the conclusion was that both have their part to play.
Then followed a Mars presentation on combining vocation education and entrepreneurship. The Ministry of Education has outlined guidelines of entrepreneur education, and it is mandatory within the EU (Entrepreneurship Education in School in Europe: National Strategies, Curricula and Learning Outcomes, March 2012). According to this, entrepreneurship education is one of the main focuses during the current five-year period (2011-2016) (p. 46), and perhaps this is why also we as teachers-to-be also learn about this. I put together a video of our ongoing renovation project. We have two vocation students working under an apprenticeship contract, painting and putting wallpaper. There are benefits for all: the students see real-life work situations in a genuine setting and get good references from the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur gets affordable (free) labour, so they can offer construction projects in a competitive price. The client has reduced costs since the students do part of the work.
The third presentation was about entrepreneurship. We had a fun quiz, learned about key competencies, and how entrepreneurship education can be integrated into vocation teaching. This is a good background to go into EduPreneur boot camp.
tiistai 6. marraskuuta 2012
What I took home from VS3?
The Virtual Session 3 is now over. Our team's presentation on Assessment went quite smoothly. This was nice, as we tried Prezi as the presentation tool for the first time, and there was a lot of material: several theories and sources. Our Prezi presentation can be accessed also from this link:
http://prezi.com/_c1qzj2vj5jl/edit/?auth_key=dqe3qw5&follow=teemuy
The listeners seemed to get the idea, though. In addition, we split the talk among two people. The Spiderman video, courtesy of Sandra, worked, even though ACP does not allow voice. After the presentation I rushed to work and then I had another evening course, so I could say it was a full day.
Our presentation was about How, why and when to assess learning, different forms of assessment, and quality of assessment brought into 21st century. We shared how assessment can be varied and broken into pieces, told of SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) and 5 stages of understanding (which are, namely, prestructural, unstructural, multistructural, relational, and extended abstract), formative and summative evaluation, what is the point of assessment, and why do we need assessment. The reasons are: discovering learner's strength and weaknesses, to maintain standards, and to provide evidence of learner's progress. According to Peter Jarvis, quality of learning and teaching is measured by evaluation, but it is difficult to assess competence and to divide it into different categories (Adult Education & Lifelong Learning, RoutledgeFalmer, 2004, ch. 8). As today's educational institutes are becoming more commercial, there is the economic aspect to consider, not just the quality.
In summary, I think we had too much material, and even I didn't understand in depth all that we were sharing. Some of the theories were outdated and complex (Wankat, John Biggs on setting up the criteria for assessment and assessing learning quality), but the listeners seemed to cope with what we wanted to convey.
In the other presentation by Earth we learned about competence-based qualifications and vocational skills demonstrations. We discussed in a light debate format about the pros and cons of the above-mentioned ways of evaluation. One of the group members was actually involved in this as a demonstration examiner (näyttötutkintomestari). Team Saturn talked about the role of personal evaluation. I learned that the this is regulated by the Finnish National Board of Education (32/011/2005). There are different evaluation tools, such as blogging, tests, journaling, writing reviews etc. The team had created a nice online questionnaire about the learning outcomes of VS3 that we each filled up.
I am now able to consider and apply different assessment methods in different situations, depending on the context, group of students, and the subject matter. I have learned how each assessment method measures and demonstrates learning. I also understood, how learning is internalized in different stages of learning and how the progress is evaluated.
There is now only 2 weeks to get ready for the next session, but we have already started to work on the material that deals with how to develop cooperation between vocational education and working life.
http://prezi.com/_c1qzj2vj5jl/edit/?auth_key=dqe3qw5&follow=teemuy
The listeners seemed to get the idea, though. In addition, we split the talk among two people. The Spiderman video, courtesy of Sandra, worked, even though ACP does not allow voice. After the presentation I rushed to work and then I had another evening course, so I could say it was a full day.
Our presentation was about How, why and when to assess learning, different forms of assessment, and quality of assessment brought into 21st century. We shared how assessment can be varied and broken into pieces, told of SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) and 5 stages of understanding (which are, namely, prestructural, unstructural, multistructural, relational, and extended abstract), formative and summative evaluation, what is the point of assessment, and why do we need assessment. The reasons are: discovering learner's strength and weaknesses, to maintain standards, and to provide evidence of learner's progress. According to Peter Jarvis, quality of learning and teaching is measured by evaluation, but it is difficult to assess competence and to divide it into different categories (Adult Education & Lifelong Learning, RoutledgeFalmer, 2004, ch. 8). As today's educational institutes are becoming more commercial, there is the economic aspect to consider, not just the quality.
In summary, I think we had too much material, and even I didn't understand in depth all that we were sharing. Some of the theories were outdated and complex (Wankat, John Biggs on setting up the criteria for assessment and assessing learning quality), but the listeners seemed to cope with what we wanted to convey.
In the other presentation by Earth we learned about competence-based qualifications and vocational skills demonstrations. We discussed in a light debate format about the pros and cons of the above-mentioned ways of evaluation. One of the group members was actually involved in this as a demonstration examiner (näyttötutkintomestari). Team Saturn talked about the role of personal evaluation. I learned that the this is regulated by the Finnish National Board of Education (32/011/2005). There are different evaluation tools, such as blogging, tests, journaling, writing reviews etc. The team had created a nice online questionnaire about the learning outcomes of VS3 that we each filled up.
I am now able to consider and apply different assessment methods in different situations, depending on the context, group of students, and the subject matter. I have learned how each assessment method measures and demonstrates learning. I also understood, how learning is internalized in different stages of learning and how the progress is evaluated.
There is now only 2 weeks to get ready for the next session, but we have already started to work on the material that deals with how to develop cooperation between vocational education and working life.
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