From Local to Global – HundrED Brings Educational Innovations Out of Classrooms
HundrED revealed their first selected global innovations at Bett London today. The non-profit company initially started in Finland, but has now grown global to seek and share inspiring innovations in K12 education worldwide.
In the keynote session at Bett Arena, Saku Tuominen and Kate Robinson addressed the major need for educational innovations. Often new initiatives that help schools change and improve are kept very local, HundrED wants to find these inspiring innovations and make them visible globally.
‘We seek initiatives that are already tested and working well. We want to shine a spotlight on this grassroot level work and make good practices spread,’ says Kate Robinson, HundrED’s Head of Strategic Operations.
Seeking the innovations consists of open applications and a research team. An expert international advisory board selects the final innovations. All innovations must meet the criteria of being innovative and original, they must address a real need and be replicable and scalable around the world.
The selected innovations
Global Oneness Project - Using award-winning free multicultural stories and films, this project brings the world to the classroom. Films are accompanied with learning resources to explore contemporary issues through a humanistic lens.
Education Cities - By turning the city into one big school, the primary mission of the project is to develop the art of collaboration.
Big Picture Learning - Personalization is enhanced to look at each student holistically by tailoring education to each student’s interests, talents and needs.
Musical Futures - A non-profit organisation that seeks to transform youth-engagement in music but adopting the practices of real-world professional musicians.
Fuji Kindergarten - Based on design-thinking, a kindergarten has turned the roof of its building into an endless circular playground and puts nature at the forefront of its teaching with trees growing right through the centre of the classrooms.
Scientix - An online community for science leaders and teachers in Europe so they can share contemporary resources and ideas that can then be used in lessons.
Blueprints - Self-assessment is part of everyday school life with children setting goals for themselves daily and reviewing their goals at the end of the day.
Empower Playgrounds - Children play on electricity-generating merry-go-rounds so they have power for lamps, enabling them to study in the evening whilst also teaching them science.
Design Education for Yourself - A system of learning where anyone can teach themselves anything by using the internet to find solutions.
The work doesn’t stop there...
The HundrED team will continue to seek innovations throughout the Spring and Summer of 2017. The following 90 innovations will be announced in the Fall together with the digital platform.
The innovations will then be packaged in an easy to use format, so that teachers and education leaders around the world can implement the ideas into their own classrooms and education systems. All content will be available for free at hundred.org.
‘Instead of putting together yet another database, we want to create a service around educational innovations,’ says Saku Tuominen, the Creative Director of HundrED.
