Snow day - again!

Due to adverse weather conditions classes are canceled but offices are open today - 03/20/13.

- informed Finlandia University this morning via Facebook.

I’ve been here only 9 days and this is already the second time when bad weather conditions effect total changes to operation of Finlandia University.

To be honest, I was more than amused when I heard first time about Snow Days here. How on earth can thing like snowfall cause changes to whole academy’s action by cancelling all classes and closing offices? It was troubled to understand for a Finn, who has lived always surrounded by snow and frost.

Snow day at Lapland, Finland few weeks before I left to Michigan. 0°F and a lot of fun!

But last Monday, when I arrived here, I began understand immediately. Snow here is wet and slippery and when it is falling, it usually comes a lot of time. Now it has been falling almost three days and strong wind blows huge snow banks along the roads. Rear wheel drive cars slither on slippery streets which are hilly and also sharp here in town. Using studded snow tires is nowadays illegal here, so the driving in these conditions may be very challenging and cause dangerous situations. People who work and study here at the campus may live far away from here, so commute to here would be too risky. So that’s why the academy wants to secure everyone’s safety.

A snowy downtown of Hancock. Good shoes are needed on sidewalk!

Ok, that’s about the weather which is always a current topic, wherever you go. It’s also an easy topic to discuss about with anyone, because they all have individual experience and expertise about it!

At destination!

Finally I’m here at Michigan to continue Hei Suomi! –program that Eeva and Sanna-Mari started last year successfully.

I arrived last Monday after some flight delays and cancellations which are quite a normal this time of year because of blizzards which have surrounded Upper Peninsula and neighboring areas last weeks. As Eeva and Sanna-Mari had last year, also my travel from Rovaniemi to Hancock took almost three full days. Along with the time difference the travel took naturally its toll and few first days went in some kind of mist. However, I’m beginning to feel at home here more day after day, thanks to hospitable local people here and of course to my new friends here at the Finlandia Hall dorm!

Winter view from my room's window at the Finlandia Hall

 About plans for Hei Suomi! for ongoing spring. The main theme will be E-magazine project which will be produced in co-ordination between South Range Elementary School 3^rd graders and 6^th graders of Aleksanteri Kenan Koulu in Sodankylä, Finland. If that co-operation will come true as expected, it would be a unique and immemorial way to learn about different culture for pupils – and by interactive way even!

Early April the other Finn here this spring, a teacher student Matleena Heikkilä from University of Lapland, will arrive to Hancock. Alongside her we are going to spend the whole month at SRES to teach local 3^rd graders about our culture and language and supervise them with collaborative E-magazine project.

These three weeks before the field period at South Range will begin, I’m going to explore the old Finnish culture here at Upper Peninsula and prepare for teaching too. I’m looking forward to spring and forthcoming adventure including it too!

About our videomaking

One of the biggest tasks at class that required the use of ICT (Information and communication technology) was to have the 3rd grades make their own videos in groups of ca 5 people. It was interesting for all of us teachers, because not one of us had done it before! I knew how it's usually done and what steps we have to go through but even I had never done it in practice. So it was great opportunity and all of us were excited.

Brainstorm's results on the smartboard.

The videos' function was to present the South Range Elementary School to the Finnish students of the same age. Students had to have ideas of what is important and special in their school from the Finnish children's point of view. We collected the ideas with a brainstorm type of thing together on the smartboard. Then we connected the ideas  to six themes and formed six groups who had to plan their video to a storyboard around the theme their group had  - randomly chosen, just to be fair.

Our time was limited when shooting the videos and we had just three cameras, so it had to be made sure that the students knew what they have to do when it's their turn to have the camera. So the planning was important - the groups weren't allowed to start shooting before their storyboard and details had been accepted by one of the teachers. Making the storyboards as a group was a great practice for social skills and for cinematic thinking and media literacy - they now have hands-on-experience on for example what kind of choices there's made when movies are made.

An example of storyboard (http://acomp.stanford.edu/tutorials/storyboarding)

 The children were at least as excited and motivated in video shooting as us teachers and that made our work easy. And if comparing Finnish and American students, they were much more confident in front of the camera compared to how - at least in my experience - Finnish children are usually more shy and are not so into performing.

Here you can see the results of our work during the two lessons (2x90minutes) with the videos. Eeva edited the videos in right order in one night (we thought that the students' computer skills were in the level where editing would have taken too much of our precious time), but otherwise we didn't touch them - we had to respect the directors' views! 

PS. If you wonder what the other students were doing when the others were taking videos - well, they weren't just waiting. We had four secret tasks that every group had to do together one group at a time and keep them as secrets from everyone else until the class was over. The tasks dealt with Finnish comics, cutting and gluing, a little bit of Finnish language and some geographic... But I won't tell more, because they wouldn't be secrets anymore then.