Finnish education and EdTech has always been an area of great interest to me. Of late, it has greatly influenced my professional journey - I’ve been doing a Masters in Education Entrepreneurship with a Finnish university for the last year, and I very recently moved to Finland to work in the education space. So, when Edtech Impact asked me for my reflections and views on why and how EdTech is utilized and implemented well in Finland, I was more than happy to add my two cents.

Most teachers will say that they are creative every day, citing how they respond to the dynamics of groups and situations which arise. However, it is good to have a reminder about the deliberate use of strategies to promote creative teaching / learning; refreshing our memories, or even meeting new options to give a creative boost to our classroom. Here are five you can use right away:

1. Creative peer feedback

When visiting a school in the Scottish Highlands, I was really impressed with a feedback hot-seating activity.

The pupils had created their own Success Criteria for designing a den, after a morning of intensive work they were asked to form a group to do their hot seating. A pupil volunteered to show their work first; the rest of the group then offered comments and questions linked to the Success Criteria, based on Tickled Pink (good features) and Green for Growth (points to develop). They were able to ask open questions like “Can you explain why you would choose to use the materials in that way?”

The pupils were really engaged in the process and took complete ownership of it giving a greater depth of dialogue and thinking to peer feedback.

Class 5W have been hot seating as Ben and Ray from "Where the Poppies Now Grow" @Martin_Impey #StGerardsPSHE #StGerardsEnglish pic.twitter.com/wlhy5rfKUm

— St. Gerard's (@StGerardsWidnes) November 6, 2017

2. Mantle of the Expert

A dramatic inquiry-based approach to learning, this is a great way to immerse children in the classroom experience. The teacher plans the fictional context with tasks and activities to complete, enabling them to gain a deeper understanding and experience of the topic. Pupils are cast as experts in working for a client on a commission, and complete a variety of activities, such as pupils becoming a CSI team to solve the murder of Thomas Becket.

I have seen this used in a wide range of contexts, from a class taking on the design of a National Heritage site for a local attraction with Year 7, to helping the United Nations to solve the Syrian Crisis with Sixth Formers. This Dorothy Heathcote-invented strategy is a powerful medium in the classroom. Find out more at: www.mantleoftheexpert.com

All set for a very special delivery from our client @DragonsofWales for our Mantle of the Expert. The children will become experts at caring for and raising a baby dragon. #primaryrocks pic.twitter.com/5oG43Khhf0

— Teacher Glitter (@Teacherglitter) August 9, 2018

3. Produce a TED Talk

Show your class a TED Talk on a topic which they can relate to. This stimulates curiosity and puts them in the Learning Pit (www.jamesnottingham.co.uk/learning-pit), ideal given that cognitive conflict is key to engagement. Work with the pupils to create the success criteria for an attention-grabbing TED talk. This will guide their work and give the opportunity to self or peer assess.

To support Growth Mindset, employ the concept of The Learning Pit into the classroom. #edchat #educhat @MindShiftKQED pic.twitter.com/wANvNnxhwa

— Michael Manton (@mmanton1) October 25, 2017

The pupils then get the opportunity to research and prepare their own presentation. Build in some drafting and peer feedback to produce the best possible piece of work; ask their partner to review the work using the criteria; give two stars and a wish to improve the work.

The next stage is time for the pupils to work to redraft and improve. Then they need to practise the delivery of the talk - keep it timed to help them. Giving an opportunity to try out their talk with their partner offers another opportunity to improve the work and model the ongoing learning process. You then need to give a sharing opportunity to reduce the number of competitors to five. This way, you can ask a ‘celebrity judge’ to come in, listen to the talks, and give feedback. Find out more at: https://www.ted.com/talks.

4. Gold fishing

One of my all-time favourites, this encourages a diverse range of contributions to a whole-class discussion. Split your class in half. Group A gets one argument to prepare from a set of resources; this contrasts with Group B, who get the opposing argument and resources. This works well with historical debates like “Field Marshal Haig deserved his title of Butcher of the Somme”.

The two groups get a set amount of time to prepare five key points, which will enable them to talk for two minutes (use a timing which is age-appropriate - this was for Year 9). Once they have had the preparation time, arrange two concentric circles of chairs in your classroom: the inner circle facing towards your classroom walls, the outer circle facing in.

Group A sit on the inner circle chairs, while Group B then sit on the outer circle chairs so that they are in pairs sitting opposite each other. Group A then have two minutes to talk and convince their partner that they have the ‘best’ argument. Group B must listen only. Group B then gets their two minutes to convince the A partner that they have the best argument. I then get the B group to move two chairs clockwise and repeat the process. This is repeated twice more. The pupils then must switch arguments using the same talk protocol. This time they get feedback from their partner on what they many have missed. This will be a very noisy section of the lesson.

I then ask the pupils to return the furniture to the original format and take their seats. The next step is to reflect on why I may have chosen this activity - they will come up with the need to listen effectively, developing their views and reasoning. They are then fully prepared to debate the questions as a class, and write up their judgement with quality reasoning.

5. Get your perspective specs on!

When working with pupils to get a deeper understanding of different historical viewpoints, these can be a great tool. Get your pupils to design and make some ‘perspective specs’ - genuinely outrageous glasses. Then model the process with them, looking at a source like Henry VIII’s court spending. Ask them to consider what it tells them about Henry VII and his style of government? Then, in pairs, put the specs on. Half the class are to be Henry VII, the other half Henry VIII. How would they view the source differently or the same?

The physical act of putting the specs on helps pupils to understand that perspective and interpretations of the same piece of evidence can be very different. This time to explore ideas in their pairs will give them confidence in feeding back ideas as a bigger group. I usually record their views in two columns on the board to gain a collaborative class view on perspective.

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A couple of years ago I led a study which provided the evidence, for the first time, that the physical characteristics of the classroom not only affect the learning progress of Primary school pupils, but impact very significantly. Taking everything together, the measured impact of the classroom design factors explained 16% of the variation in learning of the 3766 pupils - in the 153 classrooms - assessed.

When it came to SATs, Natalie Carry, deputy headteacher at St Edward’s Primary School in Birmingham, had a real problem. “We were finding it difficult to find questions for the pupils to answer,” explains Natalie, “and we were using booklets but these can only be used once.”

From my adventures running architecture sessions with kids, there is a lot I have learnt about creating the best facilities to support young creative geniuses. Here is a series of recommendations to create and manage an exciting hub of architectural discovery:

We have been using Word Aware as a structured whole-school approach to promote the vocabulary development of all our children. It is primarily focussed on whole-class learning and we have found it is of particular value for those who start at a disadvantage – including children with Developmental Language Disorder, Special Educational Needs and those who speak English as an additional language. It has had such a major impact on word recognition and understanding within English, we decided to extend it to French and Spanish as an approach for learning new, contextualised vocabulary.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is high on the agenda for schools, inspiring teachers to find more creative ways of bringing these skills to life in the classroom. Is Arckit the solution we’ve been looking for?

In school, crafting needn’t be limited to the art classes; in fact, it can be a really great way to engage students with subjects in a different style. Shaking learning styles up is often very stimulating - a nice break from the norm - and art can be used to supplement learning in almost every other subject on the curriculum. Here are some ideas for injecting some creativity into Geography classes.

Here’s the problem with highlighting: Every day pupils highlight words in books. Their teachers hope that the words will resonate, be reviewed and spark some thought. For most though, highlighted words don’t do that.

Last year, the pedagogical sphere witnessed some significant issues and proposed plans, including accountability measures, governance, teacher retention and the outcome of the EU referendum. Despite this, one thing has remained steady; the use of edtech within education.