Itä-Suomen yliopiston harjoittelukoulun Rantakylän normaalikoulu on hyväksytty Apple Distinguished School (ADS)-kouluksi vuosiksi 2021-2024.
Tunnustus on myönnetty edistyksellisestä teknologian käytöstä opetuksessa, ohjauksessa ja opiskelussa. opiskelussa. ADS-koulut ovat tunnettuja innovatiivisuudesta, hyvästä johtajuudesta ja erinomaisesta opetuksesta. Niissä käytetään monipuolisesti Applen teknologiaa, oppimisympäristöjä ja ekosysteemiä oppimisen ja osaamisen kehittämisessä. Teknologian käytön tavoitteena on edistää vuorovaikutusta, luovuutta ja yhteistyötä niin kansallisesti kuin kansainvälisesti.
Valinta Apple Distinguished School -kouluksi vahvistaa vuonna 2018 aloittaneen Rantakylän normaalikoulun toiminnan yhtä keskeistä painopistealuetta. Koulu on onnistunut tieto- ja viestintäteknologian opetuskäytössä kehittämisessä innovatiivisena ja kiinnostavana oppimisympäristönä. Tulevaisuudessa tavoitteena on ottaa käyttöön Apple-ympäristön tarjoamia resursseja entistä laajemmin tukemaan tuottajalähtöisiä, vuorovaikutteisia ja yhteisöllisiä oppimisprosesseja.
Today
Learning together in The School of the Future
In our school, built in 2018, the physical learning environment is open, flexible and gives students and teachers excellent opportunities to modify teaching and learning. We were able to build our school culture well before the building and therefore we have a strong forward looking school culture. The whole school is as a learning environment where digitality expands learning beyond the school walls.
Students in our school district come from multiple and sometimes challenging backgrounds. 35 % of our students have some special needs, e.g. learning difficulties in various subjects. Also 20 % of our pupils are with a migrant background, both being reasonable high percentages in Finland. Apple technology helps us to support every student in their learning path. We aim to ensure that everyone will have strong skills and readiness for future. This includes also our 250 teacher trainees per year. So we do not influence only locally but we equip new teachers with a mindset that helps them to go far and beyond as new professional teachers around Finland, too.
We are also a member of the Future Classroom –project which evolves future classroom environments and digital solutions in European cooperation.
Vision
With collaborative creativity towards innovative future school
Our vision is to provide high quality teaching and learning for all students to meet their individual needs. With innovative pedagogy and Apple technology students are able to find their individual ways to learn and express their learning in various digital outcomes. Motivation increases when students are real owners of their own learning processes and that supports us to reach every learner. That is why we also trust on Apple iPads as 1:1 devices and Apple apps for learning.
As a result of teachers’ deep understanding on the processes of learning and multiprofessional cooperation students gain deeper learning experiences and learn their individual way to learn. With this strong vision and school culture of collaborative creativity and innovation, our students get more support on their individual learning paths and gain skills to learn everywhere and anytime in continuous learning.
Our staff is divided into growth teams according to class levels. Each team consists of teachers, special education teachers and classroom assistants. Teams are motivated and eager to innovate new ways of learning for new learning environments, both physical and digital. Our shared leadership supports dynamic processes for teacher teams to develop innovative learning further on.
Learning
Individual learner is in the center of our pedagogy. With iPads students can choose their individual way to learn, work and create based on their own interests and strengths. Positive feedback helps students to understand their own learning processes and to guide their own learning. We use iPads as tools for continuous assessment, focusing not only towards cognitive development but to overall well-being, too.
We believe in producer based learning where students are active producers and iPad is a tool for deeper thinking and creating. Meaningfulness for learning comes from the real world integration - our students solve real-life tasks and use real-life resources with iPads.
Learning the multiple ways to create with iPads and various apps is linked to the school curriculum. Year by year students learn new ways to utilize the potential of iPads to create because students working in pairs or in teams actively collaborating is the key element to create
shared understanding and artefacts. Our open and flexible learning environments make learning visible and enable active and vivid student and teacher collaboration.
Co-teaching is one way to meet the diverse needs of the students and also to model co-operation for students. When working together in teams also teachers learn from each other every day. Teachers have various strengths and they share their expertise with others. In every teacher team there is one teacher who is a member of our ICT-team. This ensures that digital expertise is easy to access and innovative ideas are widely and openly shared among staff during specific catch-up sessions and coffee breaks. We also use APL to upskill our staff.
Success
Our position as a teacher training school within a public university provides us financial sustainability and academic co-operation. We have a strong partnership with University of Eastern Finland researchers to innovate digital learning for the future and executing our vision data-based in practice.
Our school is committed to evaluate our teachers’ digital skills and students’ performance regularly. Together with the University of Eastern Finland we gather data from students frequently and use that data to develop and redefine our ways to work further on.
We use national OPEKA survey (benchmarking ICT-skills of teachers nationwide) to benchmark our competence and we are happy that we are well above the average in every category in 2021 survey.
What's next?
- Our school is committed to evolve learning analytics with Apple products and with the latest academic research.
- ICT-strategy will be updated together with teachers, students and teacher trainees.
- We are developing learning environments in physical, digital and mental level. For example one research will include sensoring in the physical learning environment. With sensors we are following the changes in the learning environment and comparing how it effects on school performance.
