Make it NOW! Learning, Exploring and Understanding: Call for Sessions open!

Make it NOW! Learning, Exploring and Understanding -conference aims to provide an arena for discussions on craft, design and technology as an innovative combination of knowledge and skills related to eco-social values in altering the world according to human needs and wants.
http://www.utu.fi/en/sites/nordfo2016/Pages/home.aspx

The organizers are pleased to invite session proposals to the Make it NOW! Learning, Exploring, Understanding -conference to be held at Turku University, in Rauma Unit, on September 28 through 30, 2016. The goal of the sessions is to provide a forum for focused discussions on current and future-oriented research topics and results as well as innovative approaches on making, learning, exploring and understanding in the context of craft, design and technology. The session call will remain open until September 30, 2015. All session proposals must be submitted online:

http://www.utu.fi/en/sites/nordfo2016/call-for-proposals/Pages/home.aspx

Programming and robotics in teacher education seminar

Teacher educators and researchers from Finnish universities were met on 17th - 18th September in the University of Turku, Rauma Unit around the theme programming and robotics in teacher education. This meeting was a follow up event for the last spring seminar placed in Helsinki. Now in two day seminar, four workshops and several discussions were arranged in Rauma around the theme. Innokas verkosto, the University on Turku and sat@oppi were the responsible organisators of the current seminar. The organizers of the workshops were Kati Sormunen from the University of Helsinki (Startup for coding workshop), Markku Leino from the University on Turku (Lego Mindstorms EV3 workshop), Markku Lähetkangas from Festo Oy (Festo MecLab workshop), Timo Tiusanen from Step Systems Oy (VexRobotics IQ workshop) and Anna-Maija Partanen from the University of Lappland (Programming in the new curriculum workshop).

Prorgramming is becoming as a new content to the renewing Finnish core curriculum in basic education 2016. Programming will not be an independent subject, rather it will be included in different existing subjects. The seminar held in Rauma was a forum for discussions and future plans how to enhance teacher students and inservice teachers technological, pedagogical and content knowledge related to programming and robotics. Technology development is a challenge for educators, forcing them percistently to refresh their knowledge and competencies. Co-operation and sharing this knowledge is necessary to ensure effectively being up to date.

Seminar participants introduced to the discussion about the theme programming in the new curriculum 2016

Testing VexRobotics IQ

Programming Lego Mindstorms EV3

In the Festo MecLab workshop

Presentation of The Teacher Student Union of Finland