Finnish Education Forum

'Finland has fundamentally changed the mindset of young people'

Via VentureBeat.com, a column by Dean Takahashi: The DeanBeat: It's time for the U.S. to wake up and support game startups. Once again, Finland is the trailblazer. Excerpt:

Borders have melted with the arrival of app stores that allow indie developers to reach the entire globe and a billion people with their games, said Ilkka Paananen, chief executive of Supercell in Helsinki, in a presentation to journalists in November. “All that matters now is the quality of the game and its innovation,” he said. 

“All of a sudden, companies could access a billion consumers from a very distant location, like Helsinki.  

Helsinki is doing it right. But I don’t see the U.S. doing what is necessary to help game companies. I’m not the only one who’s feeling eager to boost the fortunes of game entrepreneurs in the U.S. Sana Choudary, chief executive of San Francisco’s YetiZen, a game startup accelerator, told me that she would welcome more government and corporate support of game startups. It’s not enough for some states to offer tax breaks, which are really targeted at attracting bigger companies and stealing jobs from other regions. She said that the government can step in and take a lot of the riskiest investments in the tiniest startups. 

“I agree completely,” said Tim Sweeney, chief executive of Epic Games, the North Carolina company that set up its own $5 million fund for developers this week. “These projects are driven by talent, genius, and ability of individual developers. But there’s a point where you have to buy some stuff. You have to spend money to make it. The return on investment can be huge. At every stage of growth, the investment you make is doing a lot of good.” 

Sweeney built his first game in 1991 after earning money mowing lawns for two summers. Today, it takes more people and money to make games, even among the indies who are creating mobile games. The government, or a big company like Intel, could create nonprofit incubators that foster the tiniest game studios. Those incubators could take people with ideas for games and train them to be real business people who create jobs and pay a large amount of taxes back into the system over time. 

The tiny country of Finland, with 5 million people, is making us all look bad by comparison. It has hit the jackpot with government funding for startups, and the result is games like Angry Birds and Clash of Clans, which are known the world over. 

The Finnish government’s investment arm, Tekes, puts more than $150 million directly into startups each year. Supercell, the maker of mobile games like Hay Day and Clash of Clans, received more than $450,000 in loans from the Finnish government. If it had failed, it wouldn’t have had to pay that money back. Supercell hit a home run with all three of its games (Boom Beach included), and it generated more than $300 million in taxes for Finland. 

Supercell hasn’t reported its 2014 revenues yet, but I would bet that it made more revenue in mobile games than any U.S. mobile game company. It has no more than 150 people, but you can play its flagship game in more than 150 countries, said Koopee Hiltunen, director at Finland’s NeoGames nonprofit group. 

Finland has 17 schools that offer different levels of game education in Finland, and college-level education is offered for free to all Finnish citizens. 

Finland has fundamentally changed the mindset of young people. Rather than work for big companies like Nokia, they now want to work for startups, said Artturi Tarjanne, a founder of venture capital fund Nexit Ventures. And the VCs in Finland are happy because they can move to later stage investments and put money into startups that have already had funding and worked out a lot of their early-stage challenges. 

Any country can jumpstart a mobile game business. Finland’s game industry generated $1 billion in revenues in 2013, according to NeoGames. That’s up from just $45 million a decade ago. It had the patience and foresight to invest early. 

Other countries have taken notice. Lithuania, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Canada, Singapore, India, the Netherlands, Estonia, Germany, Thailand, and other countries have created game incubators, or they help game companies through tech incubators. In London, the Playhubs game incubator has some sweet space in central London, thanks to the government. London’s game industry is strong, but it still needs acceleration.

Finnish teenagers with sleeping disorders double in last 20 years

Via The Guardian, a report by Helen Russell: Finnish teenagers with sleeping disorders double in last 20 years. Click through for the full report and numerous links. Excerpt:

Nodding heads, stifled yawns and dark circles under the eyes have become a familiar sight in Finnish classrooms as sleeping disorders have doubled among school-age children over the past two decades. Researchers believe energy drinks and personal electronic devices could be behind the trend. 

Around 20% of teenage girls and 10% of teenage boys in Finland now suffer from chronic fatigue, according to findings from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the National Institute for Health and Welfare. Researchers studied more than a million teenagers between the ages of 13-17 and found levels of insomnia at a record high. 

“We suspected that sleeplessness may have increased in recent years, but we never expected the findings to be so great,” said Erkki Kronholm, the senior researcher who led the study. “It’s thought that girls may be at greater risk than their male classmates due to hormonal changes during puberty, though we don’t yet know exactly how this affects sleep,” he admitted. 

The results are a concern for the Finnish authorities as studies suggest that prolonged sleeplessness can lead to depression, diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases in later life. Teachers are worried too, as children who cannot stay awake in class are finding it hard to keep up academically. “We found an increasingly widening gap in performance between pupils with sleep problems and those without,” says Kronholm. 

Finland is regularly voted as having the best education system in the world, but sleep-deprived teenagers may soon force Finnish schools down a grade or two. 

More research into the causes was needed, said Kronholm, who has been studying sleep patterns for 30 years, “but based on previous literature, I suspect that energy drinks have an undeniable impact.” He also pointed to “the ‘screen time’ hypothesis”. Studies show that exposure to bright light from the screens of iPads, tablets, computers and mobile phones can halt the natural production of melatonin and prevent sleep. 

“Every school child in the country has a smartphone nowadays,” said Kronholm, “something that has been proven to disrupt sleep patterns.”

Finland's education success opens new business niches

Via Global Post.com, an AFP report: Finland's education success opens new business niches. Excerpt:

Finland's successful education system has become a selling point for companies and institutions specialising in software and courses for educators, even when targeting Asian countries with high-performing students. 

Helsinki-based start-up 10monkeys, created in 2012, has turned the efficient image of the Finnish school system into one of its main business assets. Its smartphone and tablet application makes maths more amusing for primary students thanks to its smiling monkeys, and its user-friendly and colourful design. 

"In the Middle East, for example, our clients are interested in us because we're Finnish," said Arttu Laasonen, co-founder of the company, which has sold its app to thousands of users in Britain, the United States, Australia and Saudi Arabia. 

"We don't even need to mention it, they know it already." 

Finland built its global reputation in the 2000s, when it dominated the OECD's Pisa ranking, which compares the performance of students from some 60 countries in standardised tests. 

After being visited by experts and journalists from all over the world, the country's formula became a reference: an increased value of the teaching profession, an egalitarian approach and a gentle and non-elitist teaching method. 

Some one hundred Finnish companies like 10monkeys have benefitted from this recognition to export their products, mostly educational games and apps for touchscreens. 

The industry also gets direct help from the education system. 

"Being in Finland has also helped us create our app," Laasonen explained. 

"We've been able to work with a renowned maths teacher who shared his methods with us, and then we were able to test them at Finnish schools." 

In 2010, the government launched Future Learning Finland, a programme that promotes the country's "educational know-how and learning solutions globally". 

Several higher education institutions have also jumped on the bandwagon, like the University of Helsinki, which offers a training programme for foreign teachers. 

"Many groups come to Helsinki for one or two weeks," said Kirsi Kettula, head of Education Export at the University of Helsinki. "They attend courses on the Finnish education system and visit some schools." 

South Korea, which ranked higher than Finland in the latest Pisa report published last December, is among the countries that have taken part in the programme. 

"We don't even need to advertise our programmes, our clients contact us directly, because they know about Finland's reputation," Kettula added. 

The Nordic country, which currently faces increasing budgetary restraints, fell in the Pisa report's maths score from the 6th position in 2009 to the 12th last year. 

Despite equality being one of the grounds of the Finnish education system, social inequality has a growing impact on the students' performance. 

"It's a little early to say if this ranking will have negative consequences for us," Kettula said. 

"We're still among the best and our system still attracts the attention of Asian countries, even if they rank better than us on Pisa, because we're different from them."

ICT Knowledge Included into Finnish Elementary School Curriculum

Via Finnbay.com: ICT Knowledge Included into Finnish Elementary School Curriculum. Excerpt:

The Minister of Education and Science, Krista Kiuru, presented a new computer programme “Turtle graphics” to students between 4 and 9 years old today. The initiation is part of the Ministry’s new strategy to assimilate students into being familiar with advanced ICT systems from the very early ages. 

Turtle graphics is a term in computer graphics for a method of programming vector graphics using a relative cursor (the “turtle”) upon a Cartesian plane. Turtle graphics is a key feature of theLogo programming language.  

The Finnish education board believes that children should learn about software programming from the very early age. Kiuru believes that the Turtle graphics programme allows students to understand design-related computer system such as drawing as well as improving their problem-solving skills as they need to use the computer program to find a simple solution to variety of design related problems. 

So far, 300 students enrolled in the project and would like to continue.  

“Finland has a strong ICT sector and skill-base which must be utilized to protect our future. It’s great that the industry is active in providing children with the opportunity to try out coding. Turtle graphics event indicates that the computer programming can be a suitable interest for children right from the very early age”, says Minister Kiuru. 

Education in technology is defined as a national objective for Finland. The education board is given the power to use all resources possible to prepare the youth for the future where advanced computer skills will be key-defining points in the world. 

“I have included this programming into the elementary school curriculum and will be revised shortly to draft set of road skills for the students. This is one of the areas in which children’s skills in information and communication technology can be improved drastically,” says Minister Kiuru.