From digital leap to digital triple jump

Necessity is the mother of invention is a saying in many countries. Or there are equivalents, I’m sure, in most tongues.

In Finland, our Government, led by Ms Marin, promotes digital tools for social inclusion, participation and access. Ms Marin’s Government had been planning a reform of continuous learning and furhter enhancing the previous digital leap forward for the country. But then Coronavirus struck. Now, our schools and teachers are not making one leap but are making a triple jump instead - and in one week. 

Because of the virus, and in common with most countries now, contact teaching has been suspended.  At almost no notice, schools were obliged to make special arrangements for each student separately. Finland’s schools already  had experience in organising flexible learning arrangements, so the triple jump was not as extreme as it might have been. Schools have integrated technology in curricula activities and arranged communication between schools and guardians through online platforms. They have been using virtual learning environments for providing learning materials, giving and collecting assignments, providing feedback and communicating with student groups. 

However, the schools and service providers have encountered problems that OS members will recognise - such as the availability of equipment and network capacity when students move to distance at the same time. Teachers and other staff members have had to transition to distant learning and transform their methods and practices accordingly. This has generated additional efforts to support pupils especially in primary education and students with special needs with varying readiness to use online communication tools.

There is also variation among municipalities as to what extent schools have been able to provide devices to all students. The access to online learning materials has been a challenge in families which do not necessarily have enough devices for all the children in home education and for the parents who are working at the same time in distance.  Again, we see from posts on OS that this is near-universal in countries. What was enough equipment at home before is often not sufficient now.

From student and parent perspectives, this situation might have become overwhelming, if they had been  expected to use too many different and separate platforms or learning environments at the same time.

But education providers are responsible for ensuring realistic and achievable  learning way in this exceptional situation. Different measures have been already taken in reaching this goal.  The schools have local teachers specialised in the use of technology and as peer mentors they are providing assistance to their colleagues in applying the online platforms in distant learning. The National Agency for Education has released a set of guidelines on distance learning and shares examples of good practices in their website.

The Agency has also opened an information service, where education providers and schools can ask any questions they may have. The national television channel provides a number of documents and materials with integrated pedagogical support. The open universities have opened their courses for higher education students and prospective students.  The companies who are developing online learning solutions have united their forces to give free access to their materials and help the teachers to discover how new educational tools can be used in distance or how to complement their traditional way of working.  In order to widen access to technology, a group of major companies in technology initiated a campaign, which encourages enterprises to examine if they have any spare laptops they could donate to schools as additional resources for them. That is one solution to the above-mentioned equipment shortage some schools and families face.

In the middle of this crisis, the role of education has become more visible in preparing the society for the post-covid era. I think we see that from the many posts on OS or indeed on the other sites, platforms and exchanges we are all now using increasingly these past few weeks. The teachers are sharing actively their expertise in pedagogy using their internal communication channels.  And while taking advantage of the latest technological innovations, the teachers have encouraged each other to keep in mind that all the communication does not have to take place in the Internet -  a telephone is a relevant channel which can be used effectively in reaching out with the students.  New technology is good, but old technology is still valuable, too.