Get excited and innovate! – Creative use of coding in Finland

Publication date: March 18, 2019

by Kati Sormunen, Innokas Coordinator and EU Code Week Ambassador, Finland.

Winter in Finland is rough for an animal who lives in the tropics. How does Masa, the dinosaur, get through the winter? Can iOt help him to survive?

The Innokas Network’s ‘Get excited and innovate!’ course was launched in the Fall of 2018 in 10 Finnish cities with the aim of inspiring creative innovation projects such as Masa’s house in schools. Altogether 122 teachers and other educators studied the basics of the maker movement, computational thinking, coding with the Micro:bit and hands-on activities related to making and the Innovation process (see Figure below).

The participating teachers implemented their newly acquired skills in their own classes and shared their experiences with students and educators all over Finland. Based on our experiences, integrating coding processes and activities to tinkering and creative subjects promotes students learning across subject boundaries and deepens their knowledge of coding and observations of where and how it is used in their surroundings.

‘Innovation is fun!’

The Innokas Network is a community of educators, stakeholders, teachers, principals and members from other fields who are interested in education. Innokas Network is an independent and non-profit organization, under the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki, which provides both in-teacher preparation and in-service education. In Innokas Network the coding and robotics activities are organized throughout the the year.