”Well-designed educational solutions have the power to foster or even transform goal-oriented learning pursuits, but not without good pedagogical design. Therefore, the design process should take into account the research on learning and pedagogy and pursue to implement good practices in order to promote and support learning.” (Hietajärvi & Maksniemi, 2017)
The Finnish National Agency for Education (OPH) has just published a new guideline and quality standard for digital learning environments. Education Alliance Finland had the honor of creating the quality criteria in collaboration with the agency.
The criteria is linked to EAF's standard EdTech evaluation work and parameters, and Finland's National Curriculum provided a main guideline for the work. The document includes sections for Early Childhood Education solutions and Primary & Secondary Education Solutions.
Certificates are used in many industries to serve as a proof that the product meets certain quality criteria. In education, the most important aspect regarding a product's quality is that it truly works in improving learning.
Through certification, it is possible to explain in a standardized way, how the solution enhances learning. Other major benefits would be:
Meet Ms. Sirkku Alin – one of EAF’s EdTech evaluators and an elementary school teacher from Turku, Finland. After over 20 years of teaching, she sees that open-mindedness, courage and problem solving skills have brought her a long way.
Perhaps at a quick glance educational technologies and SEL, short for Social and Emotional Learning, don’t mesh together. EdTech solutions are often associated with teaching students hard skills for the future, such as programming; or giving traditional subjects like math, new digital forms.
Over the years EAF has been working closely with several EdTech accelerators, including xEdu (Helsinki), EduSpaze (Singapore), WISE (Qatar), StartED (New York), and most lately the EdTech Incubator Helsinki. Along the way we’ve gathered a bunch of insights on what are the potential benefits that EdTech companies can gain through participation in an acceleration program.