Innovation Center
An event and crystallization of the future education system for the Innovation Center
Innovation Center is an experimentation, development, and innovation unit of the Finnish National Agency for Education. In Autumn 2019, 12 curious teams, all the way from Inkoo to Oulu, initiated basic education experiments regarding an innovation programme. The themes varied from unhurried routines and new family encounters with AI to more equal utilization of technology.
The final event of the innovation programme offered an unique opportunity to gather people together from the different levels of the education system, always from pupils to the educational administration. The lessons and insights learned from the experiments were shared with all participants in an inspiring manner. In addition, the participants’ understanding of their own role in the transformation of the educational system was increased and new insights were born inside the target group.
Illustrator: Linda Saukko-Rauta
Need for Change
The goal of the Innovation Centre was to encourage the participants, schools, cities and the educational administration, to find a common future direction and make the necessary changes in order to achieve it. The objective of the final event was to get the divergent participants to think collectively.
The Vision
Because the goal of the event was to instill the idea of change taking place in daily routines to the participants’ minds, we thought that solely talk itself was not sufficient. Together with 90 participants we created a written crystallization where the future ambitions of educational system and developments of the common operational culture were described.
It was highly important to make sure that all the participants were heard as well as to create a crystallization that was approved by everyone. Combining a tight schedule and collective thinking required comprehensive background research, punctual facilitation, and an agile content creation team.
Photographer: Igor Väisänen
The Change
At the end of the event, the crystallization, that had been processed together, was presented to all the participants being committed to it. The ready prepared crystallization was published by the Finnish National Agency for Education and today it serves as a tool for the Innovation Centre explaining their role and purpose as a developer of the Finnish education system. The most important outcome of the event however was the collective thinking and insightfulness, the event aroused among the participants.
“Ellun Kanat facilitated the workshops of the event successfully and with professional expertise. What we liked best was that the collective work of the participants was crystallized already during the event, right on the spot. Planning the next steps was flexible and the preliminary ideas were developed together. We want to thank Ellun Kanat for their ability to listen precisely and for their motivation to concentrate on clarifying a multifaceted complex of issues!”
Ulla Teräs, Innovation Center
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Riikka Lavaste
Change agent, Client director (On leave)
