Digital learning environments at day care centres
The City of Tampere is testing different pedagogic solutions for developing digital learning environments both in early childhood education and in preschool and basic education. We are using these experiments to find the best apps for enriching learning. We also aspire to facilitate communications between educators and parents, and to enhance the operation processes at day care centres with digital solutions. The aim is to enable residents’ fluent everyday lives in a smart city.
Augmented reality in preschool education
An app developed by 3D Bear Ltd is tested in early childhood and preschool education. The app enables children to explore augmented reality, or AR. Children use the app on a tablet, using the built-in camera to examine their surroundings. The app allows the children to add different patterns and characters to their view. The AR app is used for practicing the children’s spatial perception, media literacy and story-telling skills, for example.
Enhanced communications
The City of Tampere has experimented with video-transmitted telephone interpretation services for cooperation between employees and parents/guardians at day care centers in the Hervanta area. The employees use the Túlka app to contact an interpreter, who then interprets the discussion straight away. Both parents/guardians and educators found the service to be very useful, so the experiment, launched in autumn 2018, will be expanded to new early childhood education units and schools in 2019.
Since autumn 2017, some early childhood education units have experimented with early childhood education and care plan (ECEC) discussions through Skype. In the future, the aim is to expand this experiment to new units as needed.
Competitive bidding for a new enterprise resource planning system
The City of Tampere aims to renew and digitalise its processes for Education and Learning Services customers and enterprise resource planning between 2019 and 2020. The process renewal and digitalisation require a competitive bidding process and the procurement of a joint new enterprise resource planning system.
The objective is to offer parents and guardians fluent services and a single system to facilitate running the child’s errands with different educators, both at the day care centre and at school. From the employee’s perspective, the new procedures and user-oriented service promote well-being at work and support operational, financial and resource control.
The competitive bidding will be launched in 2019.
Tampere is the third biggest city by population and the signpost of the educational development in Finland. Visiting our schools and kindergartens is a highlight of many international visitors interested in the Finnish success in PISA. People from all over the world travel to Tampere in order to find out how Finnish schools and kindergartens work and enable such efficient and versatile learning. In order to plan a visit to a day nursery see more information here:
