Helsinki – Beijing – connected!

Co-operation with Chinese colleagues has started slowly. I think the main problem was that I didn’t success to create a GEC-email account – so my Chinese colleagues perhaps thought I was too lazy to answer their e-mail. But as the summer – and the GEC Conference – gets closer the more we chat  – by WeChat.

My Chinese colleagues are Ms. Xiaoshuang Xi and Ms. Haijing Du from Beijing Zhongguancun 4th. Primary School. I have chatted mostly with Xiaoshuang (Sienna) and we have thought our project based learning unit. At the moment it seems that our topic will be a Nest. It will be marvelous to see what will happen in Helsinki and what will happen in Beijing. This is a fine opportunity for me to see how things work in China and how I and my Chinese colleagues will build a project together.

My 3rd graders have made video and Power Point -presentations about Helsinki. I have tried to send them to China, but for some reason I haven’ t succeeded. But we keep on trying!

Raini Sipilä, SYK

A Wonderful Conversation

A lot of things has happened this spring between Helsinki and Beijing. I have got WeChat -messages nearly everyday from my Chinese colleague Sienna,  my class has worked well with the theme Nest and now Sienna’s class in Beijing has started the project aswell.

Today we finally met: a FaceTime call let us talk face to face. I think it is marvellous how technology helps us to build relationships between people from different parts of the world. I and Sienna had a wonderful conversation about our schools, our jobs as teachers, and about becoming GEC Conference. We decided to meet at least twice before our teaching demo. We also decided to make another FaceTime call on next Monday so that our students could see each other and ask some questions. It is nice that the same project is happening in Finland and in China at the same time!

Raini from SYK