InnoSchool For more information please visit the InnoSchool homepage: http://innoschool.tkk.fi InnoSchool (2007-2010) is a project funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes). The project is a collaboration between researchers from several universities in Finland, with partners in business and the public sector (see below). Professor Riitta Smeds from Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) is the Responsible Director of the multidisciplinary research consortium, which consists of four co-projects (click on the title for more information): InnoArch - Places and Spaces for Learning (Professor Aija Staffans, Helsinki University of Technology) InnoPlay - Innovative Playful Learning Environments (Professor Heli Ruokamo, University of Lapland) InnoEdu - Education with Innovation (Professors Leena Krokfors and Seppo Tella, University of Helsinki) InnoServe - Service Innovations for the Future School (Professor Riitta Smeds, Helsinki University of Technology) Future schools are synergic configurations of the built indoor and outdoor environments, virtual ICT-enabled environments, and school management and services that enable novel teaching, studying and learning processes, life-wide, and life-long. This has been the starting point of the InnoSchool research consoritium. The goal of the project is a Future School Concept, a research-based set of recommendable models, practices, processes and structures concerning the architecture, playful environments, education, and services, and the principles for their successful combination into configurations that best support learning in a Future School. The project is divided into two parts. The first will provide the basic theoretical and empirical foundations. Selected Finnish pilot schools are analyzed from the different scientific perspectives of the co-projects, and compared with each other and with international research. In the second part the co-projects develop concepts that best support learning. These are then pulled together into a Future School Concept to be applied in the design of future pilot schools that are in their planning or construction phase. To enable the multidisciplinary research collaboration between the co-projects, the InnoSchool consortium has developed a joint Concept Design framework consisting of four dimensions of learning. The co-projects use these dimensions to conduct research and developmental work on schools from their different scientific perspectives: Formal – informal: Learning happens in many settings and it is both life-wide and lifelong. InnoSchool researches schools as central nodes of formal and informal learning in the community. Physical – virtual: InnoSchool conceives the school as much more than a physical building: it is an extended place and space of learning that includes the physical outdoor playgrounds and virtual spaces as well as mobility. Distributed – integrated: InnoSchool researches the integrated school model (based on big educational units) and the distributed model (emphasizing smaller and flexible units) to recognize their strengths and weaknesses for new teaching, studying and learning processes, and to find novel organizational forms for schools. Local – global: Traditionally, teaching, studying and learning have been tied to communication in the classroom. With ICT, teachers and pupils can communicate, share and construct knowledge in global “knowledge communities”. The new ICT-enhanced schools support patterns of behaviour, activity and practice that combine local and global. InnoSchool will also research trans-cultural issues. Project partners include: the Cities of Espoo, Helsinki and Rovaniemi, Cramo Finland Oy, Microsoft, Elisa, Martela, Lappset Group Ltd, the Finnish National Board for Education, the Finnish Forest Industries Federation, Stanford Centre for Innovations in Learning and the University of California Santa Barbara.

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