Meeting the Head of Parish - Indrek Kullam

The village of Avinurme Vallavalitsus is as I said quite extraordinary - on drivning through you would not fully appreciate the work that has been done by Indrek Kullam Head of Parish and other parish people to secure EU funding to build their concert hall, swimming pool, sauna, refurbishment of the gymnasium, a new culuture centre and in the building phase at present a new crafts centre. I could go on as there are more. But what an integrated community they are - small is beautiful. A unique teaching tool I saqw in the swimming pool - an online programme that teaches swimming technique to you as you are in the pool and no instructor in sight - the pool manager said that this teaching tool was one of the first of its kind in Estonia

A visit to Avinurme school

A really exciting day that took me to a small treasure in Estonia - a village called Avinurme Vallavalitsus and their new school. A village of approx 1200 population and what an enterprising village - everywhere I turned enterprise and innovation was to be found.
The pupils in the school listed to me ( politely) talk about Scotland and Homecoming 2009 and how we had a history, tartan, history and a nationa of entrepreneurs - Baird, Fleming, Bell, McAdam etc. I then brought them up to 21st century with what we are doing in schools to foster that new spirit of entreprise in Scotland and showed them the work being done by pupils in Peebles High School and Hawick HS and they were most impressed.
The pupils recognised the need to develop skills and I refered them to the Shift Happens presentation which seeks to explain how the world is changing and give them an insight into how it will impact on them. A lovely morning and a luch in the school dining hall with teachers and pupils - because they have a small area 3 sittings take place over lunch time.

Employer Engagement

This morning found me in Toila Gymnasium speaking to 23 teachers from across kindergarden, primary, secondary and community education in Ida Viru on the aspect of engaging with employers. The presentation is found on my slideshare site and gives first of all an overview of the changes in the Scottish education system and why these have occurred and then a short summary of the benefits to pupil, teacher, school and employer of engaging with the education of young children.

The OECD Report Learning in the 21st Century Research, Innovation and Policy gave me the opportunity of introducing the group to research in this field of " learning sciences" which suggests that the way we deliver education should change as we are now in the knowledge economy.

What are your thoughts - do we need to change our pedagogy ?

The group engaged with the Learning and Teaching Scotland website and in particular the Partnerships with Employers section of the Enterprise in Education site looking at some of the online support resources.Several videos clips were shown to the group of how schools in Scotland were engaging with employers from kindergarden to secondary.

In the afternoon we discussed how they were engaging with employers and a comprehensive list was produced to offer each other in group some new ideas. It appeared that employer engagement was being approached at different levels of participation. Each teacher was then challenged to look at producing a mind map of how they could build capacity in gaining more employer contacts (based on the Google Wonder Wheel idea) starting with themselves first then leading out into teaching colleagues, pupils,local community and national organisations.

Anybody have new ideas that could assist the group in engaging with employers ?

"The greatest journey begins with a single step" and that is what I challenged them to do - start on mapping out contacts first and then in January begin to create an idea / team / plan around employer engagement which would commence in August with their new teaching programme.

Have any teachers some case study they would share with these teachers?

Some link sites for assistance.

Slide Presentation - Employer Engagement
Shift Happens - how the world is changing and a signpost for change in education
Eric's Blog site
Employer engagement videos
Caledonian Produce (Marks & Spencer Supplier)
The Muir Project - pupuls working with builder to deliver a teaching house
Rapid Response Engineering Challenge - working across Scotland to increase an understanding of Civil Engineering.
Cathkin Nursery School working with a film company to help them produce their own movie and find out about the jobs in a film company.

Where is Toila ?

Had a couple of emails in asking where Toila is and to save you Google mapping it have put in a Small map. We are sitting 50 minutes from the Russian border and to the north of us, if i start swimming, I will reach Finland so yes it is a bit cold today -1c but some really nice walks. Tallin is the capital and as such is the magnet city that most go to. The Ida Vuru region has seen a vast decline in employment and at present 1 person in 3 is out of work - we think we have it bad. Also the housing market has tumbled and the economy is weak - as we are also.
They have interestingly enough just put together a plan for enterprise 2009 - 2025 - now thats what I call forward planning. I will try and get a summary of this to share with you all.

Home from Home

Staying at the Toila Spa in the samll town of Toila and what an interesting enterprise to have in this part of Estonia. A wealth of treatments for any age wanting to get health - very great foucs on alternative treatments especially with water and natural herbs and salt !
Appears they are busy all year round and really have developed the idea fast post Russian times.
Off to have a massage tomorrow with aromatherapy - need to relax after a hard day teaching -)

Developing entrepreneurship in VET schools

The Estonian education system after school level run VET schools ( Vocational Education Training) and this presentation shows some of their ideas and where are developing innovation in their programmes.
More information on Education in Estonia at Wiki and also in a picture format and an interesting research blog about the system and how some in Estonia would like to see it change.

The Story So far

A brief story of how enterprise in Estonia followed the Scottish model and where they are now going.