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| (c) Rositsa Bliznakova |
So the day that the IMAILE consortium had been waiting for, for 4 years finally arrived: Time to go to the "Deep Forest"
The last consortium meeting of IMAILE was held in Konnevesi on 11-15. September in the new Lapunmäki revolutionary school.
Kari Pirinen from Keski-Suomen liitto was present as the Central Finland Learning Technology procurer and we were very happy to welcome him to have a small sneak into our activities.
Because we have, afterall, done an amazing amount of work over the last 3,5 years in this project.
Our mission of course, has been to do R&D on the Personal Learning Environments of the future!
This was no ordinary project meeting.
First of all, all consortium members sent their widest working group in order to enjoy the rare chance to visit the Deep Forest, which they had been hearing about so much.
We decided that the meeting should be about working and not just sitting in a circle, reading our emails.
So therefore the meeting was organized into workshops which would contribute directly toward the deliverables and work that the project needs to do anyway.
It is important in the world now a days, to have efficient meetings.
Otherwise we are just wasting time when traveling.
This was not a useless meeting.
On Wednedsday we had both of our suppliers presenting their current situation and innovative features through demonstration.
I personally have spent quite extensive time with these solutions, but the consortium have a lot of other parties who have little or no touch with these solutions.
Therefore the discussion was very fruitful.
These two companies, Amigo and Almerin have done enormous amount of work since we've seen them in May last.
Sometimes some of the aspects of information systems development are happening so much behind the interfaces that it is difficult for people to see, what the changes have been; how are the solutions helping teachers & students or where do the money go...
My job is to make these people speak a common language.
To understand that even though the coffee of Finland might taste like scented water for Spannish...
There are still ways to see eye to eye.
To learn how to work together...
Our host this week, mr. Lauri Pirkkalainen himself had done an enormous job. I think no other consortium has been welcommed to Finland with a bigger heart than this man has.
On Wednesday Lauri had organised us to go on a working cruise.
This was a small ship to the Etelä-Konnevesi National Park.
The weather was better than the people on deck let on...
September in Konnevesi... No rain!
It is amazing how the fresh air can vitalize one's brain and get it to move again.
This was sooo needed.
The working week we had included three 12-hour days for me.
But who is counting hours, when you get to work with your old friends.
When I look at the amount of work we got done in such a small amount of time... Impact workshop, Suppliers & demand discussions, Depaits on innovation and what is the state-of-the-art in Personalised learning environments right now, Corrections to LEA project's grant agreement process, complete remodelling of the autumn's questionnaires... I'm sure we accomplished a lot more than that...
I had such a good time three days in the deep forest with IMAILE consortium. Thank you Lauri, Petri as well as all the staff of Lapunmäki school for the excellent organisation and thank you all the consortium for your hard work and great company of course! See you next time!
If you want to see the consortium in action, look at
Lapunmäki 360-image.
/Ja lyhyesti Suomeksi: IMAILE projektin konsortio oli vieraanamme kolme päivää Konnevedellä tällä viikolla. Lauri Pirkkalainen, Petri Lounaskorpi ja koko Lapunmäen koulun henkilökunta teki mahtavaa työtä konsortion viihdyttämiseksi - kyllä oli meille tarjottavat aivan ensiluokkaisia! Tämä kokous oli myös siinä mielessä huippu, että töitä tehtiin 12h/päivä, kolme päivää putkeen, mutta todellakin työskenneltiin, eikä vaan istuttu koneiden takana vastaamassa sähköposteihin. Workshopmaiset kokoukset ovat aina hedelmällisimpiä! Hyvä mieli jäi:) Kiitos kaikille järjestäjille ja tietysti kolleegoille myös!
...Big players... 
In this session, we the panelists told our various stories of connecting with the users. Having supply & demand on the same page would be something that would make software projects succeed... However, specifically in the field of Education, this is rarely the case. One of the reasons is that in the field of education, the buyer is very rarely the user. Whatever learning technology you are buying - it's usually the city or the municpality or the school or the parent who pays... and the teacher/learner/student/pupil that uses... Perhaps this is a simple case of broken phone: Developer to seller to buyer to user... That's a long journey and the information gets lost in the middle. The users also do not know what they want or what they could be asking for... And on the other hand the developers can't really spend enough time thinking of the user's needs... They are busy coding. It's someone else's problem to collect the user needs... And when none of these people in the chain speak the same language... well, that's when money and time gets lost... That's why there's many-MANY learning (and other) technologies out there, that never simply get used.
