VOC2 Feedback: How the other groups’ themes are present in my own line of work

Please visit to my blog to have a look at all the 5 themes of VOC2 related reflective works: http://pathofnorthernlights.blogspot.fi/p/voc-2.html

Entrepreneurship

I have worked for ICT industry around 14 years, thus for me entrepreneurship is not a new subject for me but a natural competence. I have experiences of drawing and proposing business plans to Nokia’s partners. And with my own interesting, I have participated entrepreneurship course in Helsinki provided by EnterpriseHelsinki. As I have exercised a business plan in my blog (http://pathofnorthernlights.blogspot.fi/search/label/Entreoreneurship), in the future I would like to open my eyes to find some business ideas in the educational field and related to teach student in ICT field.

Strengths	Developmental points
·              Learning content is well defined and organized using Prezi tool. ·              The content about entrepreneurship covers very well the learning outcome, and can be easily understood.	·        References in Finnish may be seen as not useful for foreign students. ·        Prezi tool is little bit annoying to see small letters in some of slides, unnecessary zoom in and out needed. ·      The YouTube video does not tell explicitly what differences between external and internal entrepreneurship are.

Interaction with the working community (Working-life Orientation)

I would say the key aspect I have found from the framework of working-life oriented is my views on working-life from the future aspect. Because the future is the time which new technologies will play major roles to improve globalized educational systems, I would like to be the one of the changing forces to get there.

My reflective blog regarding Working-life Orientation can be found from here: http://pathofnorthernlights.blogspot.fi/search/label/Working-life%20Orientation

Strengths	Developmental points
·               Very well structured format of learning environment followed by the learning steps and clear guidelines. ·              Creativeness in learning methods e.g. snowball and interview ·              Working-life orientation from the future perspective	·              Little bit too much of tasks in one theme, required quite much of time and efforts to accomplish them all. ·              What is the role of school in community or society? I think this is quite relevant and important for the topic, but it was not really dealt in any activities.

Sustainable Development

In my opinion, Sustainable Development should be the most urgently integrated into current educational system. It was surprising to see, still we are continuing unsustainable human impacts toward the nature and no dramatic changes from the industrialization value. Global warming and climate change as the primary issue of the sustainable development, this to be integrated into all the level of educational system. Thus help to build a value of harmonized sustainability with the nature and make sure that every individual should have responsibilities for their course of unsustainable actions.

My reflective blog regarding sustainable development can be found from here: http://pathofnorthernlights.blogspot.fi/search/label/Sustainable%20Development

Strengths	Developmental points
·              Guiding questions for individual writing have covered well the core questions. ·              The video method has been introduced to build the basic concept of sustainable development, so the concept has been used for developing my area of work.	·              Learning environment was organized as like the teacher-centered approach, students interactions have not encouraged at all. ·              Whole contents was quite basic level, not so much of surprising and new things for me

Special Education

According to the census data provided by the Finnish National Board of Education, the number of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is highest in the technology, communication and transport sector with 11%. I feel that I need to be well prepared for those students. In lesson plan and execution of the plan, there must be consideration and modification for students with SEN. Luckily, in Finland school and municipality are cooperating together to draw up the Individual Education Plan for the students with SEN.

My blog post regarding Special Education can be found from here: http://pathofnorthernlights.blogspot.fi/search/label/Special%20Education

Strengths	Developmental points
·              Writing latter to the father of son with special educational needs. With this exercise, I have tried how to support and counsel with empathetic manner	·              For the task of making a short video, needs to be explained more with what are expected by the teaching team. Providing guiding questions would be helped for those who confused about the task. ·              IEP example is only in Finnish ·              Need to bring awareness and knowledge for what are the teaching skills and methods for students with SEN, this I seen as important

VOC2: Self-assessment on how the planning and teaching activities were carried out in my theme group

My group theme: Global and Multicultural Activities (http://ivetvoc2.blogspot.fi/)

How suitable were the selected methods? How did the other groups react to our learning/teaching activities? 

In overall, our team teaching/learning activities were quite well organized using many teaching/learning methods for different styles of learning intelligences, and motivating them to share and learn from others. We have noticed that learning process by the students were not well progressed before the deadline, so we have sent an email reminder for the deadline. More than half of the students returned their learning outcomes after the deadline. At this point of writing on 11^th March, we have received responses from all 12 students, 100 % participation. There was no support request from anybody, although we have provided our group members email address for tutoring, if needed.

 Here are the activities, I have planned and responsible for, and I would like to explain how the activities were performed by other groups.

·              Art Appreciation Exercise using Paul Gauguin’s painting

100% participation. Outcomes show that the students took the activity seriously and provided own view point of the painting. Due to the activities happened in the Padlet board, their opinions were shared together among students. In this way students could recognize different view point of others. That was the purpose of the activity, how we as a diversity of cultural group, how much of differences are here in the art appreciation.

 More details can be seen from the Padlet address: http://padlet.com/wall/6me7y4dwor

•                  2.2 Watch the video: Raising Intercultural awareness

Instructions for the task was not clear for some of the students, but they have managed well in many different ways. Many of students wrote their comments to other student’s interview post. It was a great results of this task, they were engaging in other student’s’ blog by commenting. For me it was the first case of interaction in blogs between students, since we have used blog as for individual portfolio.

More details can be found from the learning environment:  http://www.ivetvoc2.blogspot.fi/p/activity-2.html

•                  2.3 Fill in the Cultural Competence Self-assessment

100% response rate.

All the students have evaluated own cultural competence using the survey tool. Overall results shows that in our iVET groups have very high score of multicultural competence for awareness and knowledge perspective. Overall score of the multicultural skills is below than other previous two categories. Based on the students writing on own strengths and weaknesses, the survey helped own analysis on multicultural competence.

Survey: http://mikyong.polldaddy.com/s/cultural-competence-self-assessment.

Results (password: oamk): http://polldaddy.com/share/s34eebc1a0a53bfd10d71fbcb2501caea1819326665

VOC2: Self-assessment on how my theme group worked

My group theme: Global and Multicultural Activities (http://ivetvoc2.blogspot.fi/)

How did I manage during the task? How did others manage in my group?

                                                                   

Our group have managed very well group activities done for creating a leaning environment for the theme of Global and Multicultural Activities, though it was very challenging all the way. At the beginning of the planning phase, I had to research a lot of books and on-line materials related to our cultural topic. It was time for my own education and also try to find good sources of teaching contents and method for our own use. At that point, our decision for the contents were only two items, one from Anne’s dissertation and other one from Milton Bennett’s Intercultural Sensitivity which from Virpi’s optional course taken from University of Jyväskylä. Anne’s dissertation helped me to understand what kind of level and scope of cultural aspects would be appropriate for our teaching plan. However, it was not enough to cover the all the core questions of our topic.  I reminded them to gaps in our scope and level of contents, which were tended to be focused on higher-education student in academic university. My intention was to bring more tasks to handle practical issues and covering all other core questions given to our topic. And I have created the blog for our teaching environment (http://ivetvoc2.blogspot.fi/ ) and draft version of execution plan.

When we had first group call via Skype, I introduced my proposals to add more activities to our teaching plan and all that were accepted, as below:

1.1 Art Appreciation Exercise using Paul Gauguin’s painting

2.2 Watch the video: Raising Intercultural awareness

2.3 Survey of the Cultural Competence Self-assessment

3.1. Describe your school's international activities at Padlet wall

3.2. Create a plan to enhance your own and/or your students’ internationalization

We had done actively group discussions via email to enhance the teaching plan with a focus on practical and diverse learning perspective. Timo was very good in analyzing the tasks in student perspective.  When we divide the ownership of the tasks in the Execution Plan, I gave the ownership of the activity 3.1 and 3.2 to our team members, so that they could feel fairness and motivation for our group collaboration.

Finalizing the teaching environment and revising the execution plan before the 15^th of January, was causing too much hard work for me. Because, although we have 4 members, most of contributions to build contents were from Virpi and me. As usual in most case of VOC modules, I took the roles of specialist and completer in this group dynamics. Virpi is also an excellent collaborator and a good team worker supporting me very well and carried out her own parts of activities.

How would I now change things? In which areas did we excel?

After the deadline of learning activities were ended by 28^th Feb, I addressed the evaluation criteria to our team which was not planned before. Meanwhile I have completed Global Education course, learned and practiced about lesson plan and teaching methods for topics like intercultural competence and sustainability. It gave me insight of how to evaluate student outcomes. However, my group it was not so appreciated because it was not planned and requires extra effort. Our communication regarding assessment method was we will give Pass for those who write half a page of reflective essays. It means that we are not evaluating any level of student learning process and how much they internalize the learning objectives. When I have tried using the criteria, it took so much time to evaluate one person, due to we have 8 activities to be evaluated per person.  It seems that it is not realistic to evaluate vast amount of writings according to the rubric at this late of stage.

Now I have learned that clear set of assessment should be included in the beginning stage of the planning of lessons and aligned with the all the activities. And workload for the assessment should be estimated, if it is too high then find some other easier way.

I would like to consider following assessment guideline for the future lesson plan in Global education contexts:  

·       “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – applying the holism approach

·       How does student integrate the intercultural elements into their thoughts and belief?

·       How they have demonstrated intercultural competence throughout the tasks?

·       How much of progress or changes have made during the course of tasks? Which task triggers the leap of their development or change of view, if there are?

·       Have they created any 3^rd space which as shared learning space between students?

Peer Assessment for Yanhong

Link to the Yanhong Xi’s Teaching Video: http://youtu.be/xRWu1r6bLlY

Topic of Yanhong’s teaching was Globalization. She taught the lesson to a group of 3^rd year students of Business Administration at Oulu University of Applied Sciences. The topic is part of the required knowledge for the students who are participating in the course of International Marketing.

The teaching video is quite well constructed to show her classroom teaching consisting of following activities:

      ·        Lesson Introduction (00:30) 

      ·        Activity 1: Define Globalization (00:59)

o   Group discussion (01:14), Video watching (02:04), Presenting discussion (02:47)

      ·        Activity 2: Benefits & Criticism of Globalization (03:40)

o   Group discussion (03:54)

      ·         Wrap-up (06:36)

At the end of the video, she provided also interview footage of student participant (08:38) and supervising teacher (09:00).

As my understanding, she used actively Learning Through Discussion method which might be designed to achieve some goals of constructivism based teaching model such as: Social communication skills, Collaboration skills, Critical thinking skills. Those skills seemed appropriate for the total of 10 student participants of Business Administration school.

They were actively involved in the discussions and other tasks, driven by the teacher’s guiding questions, and supported by the teacher and other students when they have presented the outcomes of their group discussions (positive exchange between students and the teacher at 04:59). The video showed adequate level of the students’ involvement throughout the activities, so the students had opportunities to share and engage in the learning dialogues.  

Outi Sutinen as a senior lecturer provided very positive feedback to Yanhong (09:00). She stated Yanhong’s strengths as following:

      ·        The class was well structured, logical and brought international atmosphere

      ·        Activating the students to involve the discussions and tasks against their Finnish shy nature

      ·        The students gained a lot valuable and enriching knowledge and skills

My suggestions for the improvement needed areas would be:

      ·        Plan for classroom design more suitable for group discussion activities

      ·        More encouragement for students to express their opinions and group work outcomes using their various learning styles

      ·        Plan for a time slot to ask students what they have learned at warp-up

Peer Assessment for Jay

Link to the Jay’s Teaching Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J5mDLnbsGg

Jay’s teaching video is very well constructed to show his classroom teaching consisting of following activities: Lesson Introduction (0:06), Research & Brainstorming (2:40), and Information Sharing (3:20), Presentation (4:31), Wrap-up (5:30).  At the end of the video, it provides also interview footages of student participant (6:33) and supervising teacher (7:59). As my understanding, the sequence of the teaching activities seemed based on Kolb’s experiential learning cycles.

Topic of the lesson was Equality in Finnish Education and Working Life for pupils of 9 grade at Espoo International School. I assume that approximately 17 students (shown at 03:03-03:19) including both of genders were participated in his lesson as a form of guidance counseling classroom learning.

Jay used quite a strong introduction method to encourage the students’ engagement to the topic. He distributed candies to 4 groups of student unequally and asked them to think about what just happened? Many of students have expressed their curiosity and interesting to know about the topic (1:23-1:47). And he led very skillfully the student to break-down the equality into their scope of learning. I think that it was quite interesting introduction and well managed to get the students attention and involvement, but if he used small group discussion method for the activity, the classroom would be more motivated to learn from each other by sharing their experiences.

In the second activity; Research & Brainstorming, Jay demonstrated proper time management, asked the students to perform the tasks in 15 minutes (2:40). And he addressed clearly the learning objectives for the activity; Equality in Finnish Education and Working Life compare to the rest of the world. As the student interviewee stated in her feedback for the teaching (6:49), this research activity was the most interesting part of the lesson. Jay used a learning method of small collaborative groups to research and braining storming using PC internet connections.

The next activity, Information Sharing (3:20), was a part of student assessment using verbal communication method. And Student worksheets were collected for assessing (3:52). It looks like this part of the activities, majority of the students showed low level of involvement, but (maybe) one person from the back side of the classroom dominated most of the conversation with the teacher. This situation continued to the next activity of Jay’s Power Point presentation (5:14). I think this video does not show everything, but if it tells some truth, Jay has to pay attention to equal opportunities to the students to share and engage in the learning dialogue.

I like the supervising teacher’s interview (7:59), she suggested some improvement areas such as; Sharing to be divided into equally 20 minutes for each groups, presentation method is recommended when sharing the information to get attention for every students. And students’ different international background to be addressed to contribute to the discussions. I am sure that Jay will do much better if he do double lesson and reflecting those suggestions. 

Video Journals of the International Days

On a purpose of developing my multicultural competences, I have participated in 3 days International Days program in Oulu, stared from 25^th to 27^th of March in 2014.

Here are my video journals about the 3 days’ learning activities and reflections.

International Days day 1:

International Days day 2 & 3: 

I have interviewed Heikki Mikkola: 

My thoughts about International Days:

More about the International Days can be found from here:
http://amokinternational.blogspot.fi/

Business Plan for Exercising Entrepreneurship

This post is my answers for tasks given by VOC2: Entrepreneurship.

1.     Write a business plan for your own making. It should be from your own industry of interest and include the following headings followed by 2-3- explanatory sentences:

      a)     What is the product/Service?

·        My business plan is bases on 2040 foresight report provided by the millennium project, timeline for the business plan is about 2030-2040. Some of assumptions for business environment at that time are:

·   Vocational Education and Training’s curriculum is modularized and allowed to obtain credits from online courses anywhere in the world.

·   VET institutions should offer Individualized Lesson Plan (ILP) to all the students.

·   Mass Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by global institutions are available for everyone in the world and its certificates and credits are recognized by VET.

·   Work-based learning opportunities are available from not only community based business but also online-based companies including overseas companies, and their requirements for employment are clearly defined and shared with VET institutions.

·   Student educational records are stored in the national VET system, some of key data e.g. preferred learning styles, learning goals, future plan, achievement record and etc.

·        My service is called as VET Curriculum Planner (VCP). Major VCP services will be:  

·   Providing tailored curriculum and lesson plan to educators on planning the teaching and consulting program so that the resulting programs are in tune with business needs.

·   Providing tailored learning plan to VET students so that the learning paths are clear, considered their multiple intelligences, their object oriented, linked to job market needs, utilizing the best courses available from the MOOCs.  

www.google.com/images

      b)     What is unique about your product/service? Why are you uniquely qualified to succeed?

The VCP services will be produced in the connection with the national curriculum, VET institution and MOOCs and business information system so that Information produced by the system will be a formula of all the requirements expected by all the parties involved in VET education. It will guarantee the high quality of VET education, individualized flexibility, globalized education, and cost efficient solution.   

     c)     What weakness are possible?

Legal boundary to connect and access the all the parties system information. Quality of the VCP service is highly dependent on reliability of the all the parties system information and how to protect individual information leak.   

     d)     What’s the advantage of the customer in buying your product/service?

·        For VET educators, they will get all the planning information and which are tailored for school level of needs. It will reduce their workload for planning lessons and offering worldwide globalized curriculum to their students.

·        For VET students, they will get individualized curriculum plan, which will motivate them to learn in the internationalized context. Their learning is not limited in the local school, expended to global level. And their learning will be well aligned with business job market needs so that it guarantees their smooth transition from VET to employment.

·        For business, reduce education cost for new employees and their competence fits well for their job requirements.     

      e)     Who are your target customer?

The service needs to be developed in the national level to connect all the VET parties, so the target customer will be the National Board of Education, which can provide such a responsible services to the all VET institutions.

     f)       How will you find your customers, how will you market your company?

It will be a joint project to be offered to the National Board of Education.

Key benefits of the VCP as for marketing will be:

·        Enhancing cooperation between VET institutions, MOOCs, work and enterprises on all levels.

·        Strengthening of student learning outcomes, which are globalized and localized as well.

·        New type of on-the-job experiences, working life and interactive skills from part of curricula.

·        Nationwide cost saving for VET education.

·        ICT’s potential is exploited.

    g)     What do you need? (People, money, expertise, a retail outlet…)

·        Government funding
·        A laboratory and a virtual office

·        Employees e.g. engineers to develop the VCP system, consultants and architect

·        Computer software, hardware, network and licenses

References

·        Foresight 2030: http://tulevaisuus.2030.fi/en/working-life-in-the-future/the-best-educational-system-in-the-world/

·        CTE and Work-Based Learning: http://www.ericdigests.org/2005-1/wbl.htm

·        Individualized Learning Plans How-to Guide – Section I, Career Planning & Management, Work-based Learning: http://www.ncwd-youth.info/ilp/how-to-guide/section-1/career-planning-and-management/work-based-learning

•              Park, Y. Glenn, J. Gorden, T. and Florescu, E. 2013. State of the Future. Kyobo

 2.     What part of this Prezi did you find useful for yourself and what not so useful? Why?

Useful:

·        Learning content is well defined and organized using Prezi tool.

·        The content about entrepreneurship covers very well the learning outcome, and can be easily understood.

Not Useful:

·        References in Finnish may be seen as not useful for foreign students.

·        Prezi tool is little bit annoying to see small letters in some of slides, unnecessary zoom in and out needed.

·        The You Tube video does not tell explicitly what differences between external and internal entrepreneurship are.

3.     There’s an Enter-office in Pori which helps people starting up a business – can you find a similar local organization near you which gives entrepreneurship help?

In Helsinki, I have participated in an entrepreneur course provided by EnterpriseHelsinki. The course was in for immigrants conducted in English. Finnish courses are offered also for Finns. It was covered very well all the issues related to start-up business in Finland.  

Here is a brief about EnterpriseHelsinki and link for more information:

EnterpriseHelsinki supports entrepreneurship

EnterpriseHelsinki is a service centre for entrepreneurs in business, or who hope to enter business. The centre provides support, all the way from developing a business idea to finding the right contacts. EnterpriseHelsinki is a unit of the City of Helsinki's Economic Development service, which also includes Helsingin Uusyrityskeskus ry. 

In particular, EnterpriseHelsinki supports start-up businesses. The centre arranges free-of-charge information sessions, briefing participants on the core issues involved in starting a business.                                                           

            http://www.yrityshelsinki.fi/fi/mika-on-yrityshelsinki

Form this link you can create your own business plan with a professional look using a computer tool:  https://www.liiketoimintasuunnitelma.com/index.php

Pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in Finland

This post is an individual task given by VOC2: Special Education

Task: Parent’s point of view

You’ve had e-mail from a parent who’s worried about his son’s future.

“Dear Eki,

I’m writing this letter because I’m starting to worry about my son’s future. At the moment he is a happy, 16 year old student on a special class, where he has studied since he started school. My son is autistic (communicating with him is difficult and his behaviour and speaking are often repetitive) and has always had problems in math. I think that part of the learning disability can be just because he is not interested I math and the teachers during the years have not always been qualified. His intelligence is anyway a bit above average and he is very talented in geography. Also his memory is extremely good. He has still a year to go before making decisions about the future, but I have some questions I would like to have answered, to calm my nerves:

1. Is it possible that he could continue in normal vocational education or upper secondary high school with an assistant? He has had one since he was three. What requirements there are in his case? Are there some other options if the normal vocational school is not a possibility?

2. What laws and standards there are concerning special needs in vocational education? What rights (f.ex. inclusion, special support) my son has as a student of a vocational school?

Daddy -71”

 

Here is my answer to the e-mail.  

Dear Daddy -71,

It seems like you are very concerned about your son’s future how to make a decision for choosing his upper secondary school. And this is causing you a lot of anxiety at present. Because your son has autism spectrum conditions you are under a lot of pressure and feeling very uncertain for his future. I would like to share your concerns that you as a parent of a son with special education needs, how it might be challenging for him if there is no guarantee of educational development and personal well-being.

Do you know that in Finland every pupils have support guarantees equal opportunities to complete upper secondary education and training? According to the Finnish National Board of Education, once a student’s learning difficulties have been identified, planning and implementation of support measures are started immediately, taking into account the information acquired on the student’s study performance and their needs for support during basic education. All students in vocational education and training have the right to receive sufficient personal and other educational guidance as needed.

If you take a look at the below bar chart, in Finland special needs students in upper secondary VET is increasing every year since from 2004 to 2008 (and until 2011 based on Statistics in Finland). Number of special needs students are approximately about 17000 (in 2008) which are from both of special needs VET and normal VET institutions. These numbers would tell you that you are not the only one in the situation of concerning what VET institute would be the best choice for their children with special education needs.

To answer your first question, your son has three possible choice; normal vocation education or special needs vocational education or upper secondary high school. Choice between normal (Mainstream) VET and special VET, you need to consider the following guidance:

“The first alternative to providing special VET is to include students with SEN in mainstream VET institutions. Only when this is not feasible is the second alternative considered: the provision of special needs education in a special group or in a special VET institution. In Finland most students with SEN are integrated into mainstream VET. Special VET institutions, in turn, are responsible for providing education and training to students with the most severe disabilities or those who most need the support services provided in special VET.”

As a first step to choose a proper institute for your son, I would like to recommend you and your son to draw a future plan based on your son’s interest in his future job, his support needs and strengths and weakness in his studying, as you said that he is good with geography and has extremely good memory, but poor in math. This plan would support you to choose an institution and help to make an individual Educational Plan (IEP, HOJKS in Finnish) later on if he is accepted in an institution. This IEP will be required by the institution in order to implement a decision on special support issued for your son.

Here I would like to provide you contact information of VET and special VET, please plan ahead and arrange meeting with the schools to know more about the institutions’ offerings and how well they are specialized in supporting student special needs combined with development of life-long learning skills and on-the job learning opportunities. Please find more detail information from the following web links:

·        Koulutustarjonta 2014-2015: http://www.ameo.fi/koulutustarjonta/koulutustarjontataulukko

·        Vocational Special needs educational and training in Finland: http://www.ameo.fi/briefly-in-english

      http://www.ameo.fi/koulutustarjonta/koulutustarjontataulukko

·        Vocational Education and Training in Finland: http://www.oph.fi/download/131431_vocational_education_and_training_in_finland.pdf

·        Vocational Education: http://www.opintoluotsi.fi/en-GB/Studies_in_English/Vocational_Education/

·        Ammatillinen koulutus: https://opintopolku.fi/wp/fi/ammatillinen-koulutus-2/

About the second question regarding legal issues and rights of special support, here are some cites from Finnish legal system:

·             Upper Secondary Education

o   Special needs education is not mentioned in the current regulations of upper secondary education (629/1998, 810/1998). Although The Upper Secondary Schools Act (629/1998) states that students with disabilities and those in need of special support for some other reason are entitled to assistant services, other teaching and student welfare services and special aids, as required in their studies.

You can find more details regarding Finnish legal system from the following link:

http://www.european-agency.org/country-information/finland/national-overview/legal-system

I hope that with my information, you are able to go forward to make a decision for choosing a right secondary institution for your son’s future.

Please feel free to contact me, if you have further questions.

Kindly regards,

Mikyong Shin

Task:Teacher’s point of view

Do a short video where you demonstrate us you have internalized this topic. The optimal length of your video is about 3 to 5 minutes long.