The secret of the best education

A country where the best grade students want to be teachers, where teachers have a passion they want to share and where a the whole country give the profession the value it has.

Teaching in Finland is a work that goes outside the classroom. Outside when they are preparing their own lectures and outside also when they are sharing common areas with students. No offices, no locks, no property, everything for everyone.

Students start school with 7 years old but at that time nearly all of them have learned how to read and write in the home-schools. Once in the real school, teachers have the same students for most of their school life. They know each other, they know in what they are good and in what they are not. Three teachers share the same classroom and extra help in allways available.

 There´s no win/lose education, learning is a team game. Teachers work together in a relaxed way, shoes out and using their own names. No power distance and a lot of trust, teacher are not asked for what to do, they know they trust on them because they know where they are, why and how to do what they need to do.

Teachers believe students are the future and they know they are a key factor on it. They are not the ones that draw the lines students need to walk in, they are the ones that walk with them along the journey.

Since 1891

A family that built an empire.

Their secret?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJrvH8sL-nk

Feeling the competition

One of my first posts of this blog was about Innostava suomi, a company which organizes sport events and which aim is to really change how spectators feel the competition.

Everything sounds so good but it was not until today that I can really say that it is because I was part of the audience and I felt what I think they want people to feel.

Starting from the claps, the poster you see in the picture was foldable and it was a loud way to clap. As a skater I can say that claps are much more than a way to make sound, they are a way of giving energy to the skaters, a way of getting the audience into the performance of the skater.

I did, I clap and and hear others claps. It was awesome. I had also the chance to be in the skater press sesions and all of them agree that the audience was really supportive.

The first performance was the opening ceremony, a performance with a lot of lights and direct music.

However, everything was not on the ice and the seat. Innostava suomi was around all the ice rink:

At the entrance, a sauna and traditional food were the way to wellcome you both to the ice risk and to the finnish culture.

An experimental space where science, art and technology share seats.

Winter is coming and with the winter the snow and the igloo made out of it.

A recyclable piece of art which also reminds of white winter.`

The stress-free zone. Full of nature and confort.

Another inititative was to get closer the fans and the skaters. The way of doing it was that fans from all over the world sent to Espoo their knitted mittens and with a lot of pleasure, I was the responsible for giving them to the skaters. All of the artists will now receive the signature of the skater who took their mitten as well as a photo with them. The skaters were really thankfull and appreciate their work and I feel really happy to be the connection between them.

Thank you Innostava suomi, I feel, enjoy and love Finlandia Trophy.

Yesterday and today

Finland is a country of traditions. One of them is the Helsinki Baltic Herring Fair, the oldest traditional event in Helsinki that has been held since 1743. Straight away from the Baltic Sea and without coming out of the boat, salted herring can be found, tasted and bought.

For 272 years and probably forever.

Thinking in production

Once designing it is a common mistake to design without thinking how to produce. It´s nice to feel free drawing while designing but unluckily sometimes this drawing end in bad manufactured products and high cost mistakes.

Draw,

erase,

draw,

erase

...

There´s always enough pencil and rubber,

but no allways enough money for later mistakes.

Our health and their health

As designers knowing what impacts our products have in the environment is sometimes not enough. There are some impacts they take place in the customers´ health as well and it´s something we cannot forget about.

The health impacts has two main issues: the risk assestment itself and the communication of it.

First of all the risk, there are two ways of knowing it: with direct knowledge or extrapolating it (using animals and models, among others). Once known, it is important to have data based information, and that´s why some organizations such as WHO, OECD or EPA exist. 

Once the risk is known, the complex part arrives: the comunication. The most important issue is to know who the audience is and say the same things in the most appropiate way for them, Independently of the audience and the way of saying the same thing, the most important thing is to be allways honest. 

A lot of phsycology is needed, no underestimations, no overestimations neither prejuicies for crystal clear risk communication. Never forget that we are not talking to machines that record, we are talking to people with feelings and fears behind this screens.

One useful tip to end and think:

"Some remedies might be worse that the disease".

Sustainable plastic?

The other day,looking for the plastic that suits best our future product, I discovered polylactictic plastic. A biodegradable plastic than is delivered from reneweble sources such as corn starch or sugarcane.

PLA, as it´s known, can be manufactured in many different ways: injection molding, sheet casting, among others.

It is useful for producing loose-fill packaging, compost bags, food packaging as well as a feedstock material in 3D printers.

Another interesting use it has is the medical implant one, it is used in this human medical implants because this bioplastic breaks down inside the body within 6 months to 2 years.

Going back to the life cycle analysis I was talking about in the last post, PLA can be recycled with no loss of original properties, that is to say it has cradle-to-cradle recycling.

If all this arguments where not enough, PLA can be colored, leading designers to choose between endless colors for their different products.

As every thing, not all is good neither bad and PLA has some disadvantages as well. The one than can affect more the products is it´s low glass transition temperature (60-65º).

Now that you are reading this, another person knows PLA, so what are you waiting for?

PLA is by far the best choice for today and for tomorrow.