Speakers
Dean Patrik Scheinin, University of Helsinki
Permanent Secretary Anita Lehikoinen, Ministry of Education and Culture
Ms Anita Lehikoinen was appointed Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Education on 1 May 2013. She is Head of Operations of the Ministry in cooperation with the Minister of Education and the Minister of Culture and Sport, and leads the implementation of the Government programme within the Ministry´s administrative sector. She supervises the internal functions of the Ministry and plays a significant role in preparing the Ministry to respond to future challenges. Anita Lehikoinen has been employed with the Finnish Ministry of Education since 1989. Prior to her current position, she served as Director General in the Ministry, in charge of higher education and science policy development. She has also worked in the field of higher education, and was responsible for the implementation of the Bologna process in Finland and internationalisation strategy for higher education, among other things. She has also been involved in work to reform the steering system of Finnish universities. Ms Lehikoinen has served in many national and European committees in the field of higher education, research and internationalisation. Ms. Lehikoinen holds an M.A. degree from the University of Helsinki (1987).
Professor Hannele Niemi, University of Helsinki
Hannele Niemi is Professor of Education (1998–) at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her main research interest areas are teachers’ professional development, quality of teacher education, moral education and technology-based learning environments. She has published several articles and books on education in Finland and Finnish teacher education and contributed in many international education research publications. Hannele Niemi has been a scientific leader of big national research projects in Finland and a Director of the national research program “Life as Learning”, Academy of Finland. She has been Professor of Education in Teacher Education Departments of Oulu, Turku and Tampere Universities in Finland. She has been invited as a Doctor or Professor Honoris Causa: University of Bucharest, Romania; J.C. Koh Professorship Nayang Technological University, Singapore; University of Lapland; National Defense University, Finland 2013. She has been selected as the most influential person in education in 2013 by the Finnish Teacher Union and invited as a member on Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in Academia Scientiarum Fennica 2004. In addition she has served as an advisor or a position of trust at the OECD and different European institutions. Besides academic work Professor Niemi has been in various administrative positions in the Ministry of Education and in the National Board of Education as wells as Vice Rector, Dean and Head of the Department at the University of Helsinki.
Dr. Keith Devlin, Stanford University
Dr. Keith Devlin is a mathematician at Stanford University in California, a co-founder and Executive Director of the university’s H-STAR institute, and a co-founder of the Stanford mediaX research network. He is a World Economic Forum Fellow, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. His current research is focused on the use of different media to teach and communicate mathematics to diverse audiences. In this connection, he is a co-founder and President of an educational technology company, BrainQuake, that creates mathematics learning video games. He has written 32 books and over 80 published research articles. Recipient of the Peano Prize, the Pythagoras Prize, the Carl Sagan Award, and the Communications Award of the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics. In 2003, he was recognized by the California State Assembly for his “innovative work and longtime service in the field of mathematics and its relation to logic and linguistics.” He is “the Math Guy” on National Public Radio in the USA.
Dr. Elena Kushnerenko, University of East London
Elena Kushnerenko is an internationally recognised expert in the field of infant auditory ERPs and developmental changes in brain responses to auditory stimulation. Main research interests are development of language and attention and associated learning difficulties, stress and anxiety in children, auditory processing disorder and audiovisual processing and integration. Kushnerenko completed PhD in 2003 at the Cognitive Brain Research Unit, University of Helsinki under the supervision of Academy Professor Risto Naatanen and Dr Rita Ceponiene and has been awarded Academy of Finland fellowship for independent research at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, where she has been working in collaboration with Professors Gergely Csibra and Mark Johnson. Since 2007 Elena Kushnerenko is in charge of EEG and Eye-tracking studies in babies and children at the UEL Babylab looking into development of language and attention and developing collaborations with UK and international Babylabs.
Professor Marcus Specht, Open University of the Netherlands
Marcus Specht is professor for Advanced Learning Technologies at the Open University of the Netherlands and I am currently heading the CELSTEC Learning Technology Labs. I am and was involved in several national and international research projects on open educational content, competence based life long learning, personalized information support and contextualized systems. I received a Diploma in Psychology in 1995 and a Dissertation from the University of Trier in 1998 on adaptive information technology. Specht has worked as a senior researcher at the GMD research center on HCI and mobile information technology and as the head of the department “Mobile Knowledge” at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT). From 2005 Specht was Associated Professor at the Open University of the Netherlands and working on competence based education, learning content engineering and management, and personalization for learning. Since 2008 Specht is full Professor for Advanced Learning Technologies at the Educational Technology Expertise Centre of the Open University of the Netherlands. Currently he is working on Mobile and Contextualized Learning Technologies, Learning Network Services, and Social and Immersive Media for Learning. Marcus Specht is member of ACM, IEEE as well as member of SIKS and ICO research schools in the Netherlands.
Aulis Pitkälä, Finnish National Board of Education
Aulis Pitkälä is the Director General, Finnish National Board of Education since 2012. Prior to this he served as Deputy Mayor, Education and Cultural Services (2008 -2011) in the City of Espoo, where he was responsible for Finnish and Swedish early childhood education and teaching, adult education, cultural and sports services, services for young people. Between 2004-2007 he hold the post of Deputy Mayor in the City of Vantaa, where his responsibilities included education (education and library services) and leisure-time services (cultural, youth and sports services). He has a number of educational and cultural positions of trust.
Ms. Minna Kukkonen, Innokas Network/City of Espoo
Minna Kukkonen is an Innokas Network-coordinator, teacher and KYKY-responsible person in City of Espoo. Ms. Kukkonen has developed activities for students’ participation in school and in school-community partnerships. She has co-operated in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers and has been involved in educational research project Finnable 2020. She has also been creating and implementing the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Ipad as a teacher’s tool. In KYKY model she promotes the students’ ability to innovate in authentic collaboration with companies. As an author she produces e-learning materials for science education where learning of 21st century skills and Finland’s new national core curricula for basic education are considered. Ms. Kukkonen is interested in developing an innovative school where technology and innovation education, team teaching, shared leadership, partnerships, co-creation and especially students’ engagement and learning of 21st century skills take places. Ms. Kukkonen holds a Master’s degree in Education and is currently working on her doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki focusing on the use of ICT in school -community partnerships.
Ms. Essi Keisala, Vanttila School/City of Espoo
Ms. Essi Keisala is a student in 7th grade at Vanttila School in City of Espoo. She has been in with Innokas Network activities for over six years. She is interested in ICT and is active as a Tutor-student promoting coding and robotics in schools. As her hobby she takes lessons in violin and plays in string orchestra. She is also active in scouting.
Dr. Kristian Kiili, Tampere University of Technology
Kristian Kiili, Ph.D., works as an Academy Research Fellow (2015-2020) and an Adjunct Professor (User Centered Design) at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Pori department. He heads TUT Game Lab research laboratory that focuses on game-based learning research. Kiili has headed several educational technology and game research projects and gives lectures in serious games design in TUT. He has been a visiting scholar in Stanford University in 2009, 2013, and 2014-2015. Kiili has published over 80 international peer-reviewed papers. His current research interests are related to learning sciences, game-based learning, game-based assessment, and mathematics learning games.
Senior University Lecturer Ari Korhonen, Aalto University
Ari Korhonen’s research interests are on data structures and algorithms, learning analytics, and software visualization. He is especially interested in developing applications for online teaching and learning in the context of computer science education. Korhonen’s current work is concerned with software tools and principles in the area of automatic assessment systems. He also act as an instructor and teacher for several courses.
Docent Minna Huotilainen, University of Helsinki / Uppsala University
Minna Huotilainen works at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden. She has previously worked as Researcher Professor at Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and Brain, Learning and Education Professor at CICERO Learning Network. She is internationally known for her work in the magnetoencephalographic recordings of human fetuses, showing memory-related brain activity. Her work in fetal auditory learning both for speech sounds and for musical sounds is also highly respected. She has published more than 150 journal articles mainly with ERPs and MEG. She is a top 2.5% scholar worldwide according to Research Gate.
Professor Jouni Välijärvi, University of Jyväskylä
Jouni Välijärvi is professor at the University of Jyväskylä, and has been director of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research since1996. He has been working also at National Board of Education NBE during his career. He has been National Project Manager of the OECD PISA since 1998 and represented Finland in the IEA since 1996. He has been a member of expert groups e.g. in OECD, EU, Ministry of education, NBE, and Council of Finnish Municipalities. He is a member of the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre and chair of Higher Education Evaluation Committee. Jouni Välijärvi has been a member or chair in more than 30 expert or advisory group intended to develop e.g. pedagogy, curriculum, evaluation, STEM and education system on national and international level. He has long and diverse experience about collaboration with teachers, principals, policymakers and officials from the parliament, ministry, municipalities and teacher union. He is also experienced to work with media, and e.g. has given hundreds of interviews for national and international newspapers, radio and TV channels. Välijärvi has published numerous articles in newspapers, journals and teachers’ and education providers’ professional publications.
Professor Jari Multisilta, University Consortium of Pori
Jari Multisilta is the director of the University Consortium of Pori, Finland and professor of multimedia in Tampere University of Technology, Information Technology at Pori, Finland. He got his M.Sc. from the University of Tampere in 1992 in Mathematics and Dr.Tech. at Tampere University of Technology in 1996. He has studied learning and modern communication and information technologies and has been a consortium leader and partner in several research projects on this area. Currently, Multisilta’s research interests include networked and mobile learning, digital video storytelling and mobile social media. He has published over 100 international conference papers and journal articles on his research area. Previously, he was the director of CICERO Learning Network at the University of Helsinki (2011-2014). Multisilta has been the Visiting Fellow at Nokia Research Center on 2008 – 2009 and Nokia Visiting professor on 2012. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, H-STAR Institute for over 18 months in 2007 – 2014.
Professor Heli Ruokamo, University of Lapland; Visiting Scholar, Stanford University
Heli Ruokamo is a professor of education, specialty media education, at University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland. She is a vice dean of the Faculty of Education and a director of the Centre for Media Pedagogy. Ruokamo is docent of Media education in the faculty of behavioural sciences at University of Helsinki and docent of Network-based Learning Environments in faculty of education at University of Turku, Finland. Ruokamo has been working for 3 years as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, Centre for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning, and at H-STAR institute.
Professor Ruokamo has 15 years of experience in research and development of pedagogical models for network-based education and educational use of ICT’s. Her research has focused on mobile and meaningful learning, playful, game-based, VR, and simulation-based learning environments. She has approx. 100 scientific peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Ann Lieberman, Stanford University
Dr. Ann Lieberman was previously a Senior Scholar at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and is Professor Emeritus of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Lieberman is widely known for her work in the areas of teacher leadership and development, collaborative research, networks and school-university partnerships, and the problems and prospects for understanding educational change. Dr. Lieberman has written or edited 16 books. Her latest is Teacher Learning and Leadership, Of, By, and For Teachers (with Carol Campbell and Anna Yashkina).
Lieberman has served on numerous national and international advisory boards, including those of the United Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. She is also a past president of the American Educational Research Association. As a researcher she is currently working on deepening the field’s understanding of different structures that support school reform including networks, partnerships and coalitions. She has recently been to Shanghai and Finland as a speaker and a learner. In April, 2015, she was the keynote speaker in Beijing at the Global Educational Community conference. In October, 2015, Ann was also keynote speaker in Auckland, NZ at the Ulearn Comference on Teacher Leadership. Lieberman received her BA and Ed.D at UCLA and her MA at California State University at Northridge, where she also received an honorary degree.
Professor Jari Lavonen, University of Helsinki
Professor Jari Lavonen is a Professor of Science Education and a Director of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is a director of National Teacher Education Forum, a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, and member of the steering committee of the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre. He has been researching science and technology education and teacher education for the last 31 years and his main research interests are science and technology teaching and learning, curriculum development, teacher education and use of ICT in education.
Research Director Mari Tervaniemi, University of Helsinki
Docent Mari Tervaniemi has been the research director of CICERO Learning Network since 2015. Her previous research has focused at investigating the mechanisms of human auditory cognition, emotion, and expertise. She is currently investigating the possibilities of music to support well-being and learning.