As a young aspiring teacher of twenty-something, I was confident when I entered the classroom. What could be so hard about teaching primary students long division? When the supervising teacher, who was observing my lesson at the back of the room, intervened and stopped my teaching session, I was soon set straight. In a kind and supportive manner, she then proceeded to give me feedback on every aspect of my teaching. From delivery to corrections of the more precise way to use mathematical terms. My experiences during my teacher training at Helsinki University in Finland taught me a valuable lesson: teaching is not an innate skill. It is a combination of theoretical understanding and practical experience, which you can learn.
Over the years I came to realize that even the feedback I was given during my observation was just the tip of the iceberg. Teaching is a unique profession that requires a skill set too long to list here. Amongst a myriad of things, it involves knowledge, critical thinking, communication and interpersonal skills, organization, classroom management, engaging students, creating contexts for learning and most recently of course technology integration. A teacher also needs to develop certain dispositions such as inquiry, reflective wisdom and cultural awareness. As if this wasn’t enough, education is changing rapidly and these days teachers are taxed with the huge responsibility of preparing students for jobs that have yet to be invented.
This means thinking about larger societal issues and innovation, ways to develop creativity, mindsets, the four C’s of 21st century education- and even here the list goes on. Suffice to say a teacher’s learning is never done, not least because every year he or she is usually presented with a new group of students, who bring unique needs and dispositions to the learning situation and who all learn and need to be engaged in different ways. What is astounding to me is that all this needs to happen within the confines of the classroom walls. Something better needs to happen to support this wonderful profession.
A good teacher learns from by drawing on the expertise and experience of others, discussing student learning, watching others teach, trying things out, reflecting on them and gaining feedback from peers, parents and students. In other words the whole design of the teaching profession is by default collaborative, yet has historically been a lonely one. Enter Freeed.
Freeed brings teachers together
Freeed is all about connecting teachers, and enables them to share materials, activities, and tips with teachers around the globe. In our ‘Teachers’ Room’ blog, the blog you are reading now, we share interviews with leading teachers, share trends and pedagogical insights, and make it possible for every teacher in the world to access innovative educational experiences. Although online collaboration between teachers isn’t new, Freeed aims to create a global discovery platform for teachers together with teachers that will support their daily work. Resources and ideas are easily created, saved and shared in a way that is well thought-through and suited to teachers’ needs.
Local Heroes and Global Leaders
In Freeed we believe in the power of local and global education. First and foremost we empower local education communities, because we are sure that certain methods and paradigms are suited to local culture and customs. However, we also believe in the power of local pedagogy to inspire global trends in education and provide teachers tools to explore education in other countries, to get new ideas and to implement them. In a rapidly changing world, a global community of teachers can have an impact on professional growth through connection and the exchange of ideas. In the long run, this could potentially lead to improvements in education world-wide.
Education and technology
Technology is shaping the way we teach and learn, and we should use it to our advantage. Freeed is a technological platform with the potential to create a sustainable network of teachers. Freeed applies the best of teacher knowledge, resources and creation to cutting-edge technologies in a networked world. Today’s social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for teachers to find resources, collaborate, engage in creative production, publish and mobilize online. Freeed offers all that in one platform.
Join the Freeed Journey!
Freeed was first launched in the spring in Finland. We are regularly opening new local communities of which the most recent ones are the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Tanzania. We have also opened a community for the International Baccalaureate and will open ones for other international programmes. Our priority is to keep on developing the platform together with teachers.
Join us today, and reshape the way teachers connect!