EDiversity

Mr. Niko Lindholm (Fin)
Former Director of Sales, TribaLearning

What Choices Have We? The Finnish Lessons

Previously serving the government as Project manager in the Finnish National Education export programme, namely Future Learning Finland, Niko has gained extensive experience in selling learning systems, and was responsible for opening markets for Finnish educational companies and organizations in Saudi Arabia and China.

Niko is also a visiting scholar at Fudan University of Shanghai, and a PhD Candidate at University of Tampere in Finland. He holds a master's degree in Social Sciences from the University of Turku in Finland specializing in politics of education refroms in East Asia. He also worked as a visiting researcher at Osaka University in Japan and helped Duy Tan University to build up its International Department in Vietnam.

At present, he is promoting digital learning. By combining both educational data mining and learning analytics, learners can save, organise and search learning material in different formats, and then study these materials collaboratively with other students on the Internet.

Why Finnish schools excel without relying on drilling for exams and lots of schoolwork?

Presentation Slides

Dr. Stephen Krashen (US)
Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California

What Choices Have We? Textbook vs Storybook

Dr. Krashen is a world renowned linguist, educational researcher and activist. Since 1994, his research focus shifted from linguistics to the study of education. He is best known for the development of the first comprehensive theory of seconf language acquisition, and is also the co-inventor of the Natural Approach in language teaching. He has published more than 350 papers and books, mainly on bilingual education and reading. He also promotes free voluntary reading during second language acquisition, which means students are free to choose a book that they like and are allowed to read it at their own pace. The aim is to help them enjoy reading, so assessment is usually minimized or there is none at all. During a campaign to enact an anti-bilingual education law in California, Dr. Krashen became an activist and campaigned aggressively in variuos media, writing over 1,000 letters to the editor defending bilingual education.

Dr. Krashen has won a number of awards for his work. In 2005, he was inducted into the International Reading Association's Reading Hall of Fame. Outside work, he is a Kung Fu master, holding a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Why the traditional approach: worksheets, tests and memorisation is no longer relevant in language acquisition? Can success stories in primary students in Mainland China and Taiwan be replicated in HK?

Supplementary document: Some Fundamentals
Supplementary document: What choices do we have?