Teacher in a dim classroom with far too many students. No resources, except an old blackboard and a piece of chalk. Teacher giving a lesson the only way he knows: teacher talking and students listening. Next lesson will be the same and also the lesson after that. Learning results are poor and frustration is high.
This kind of reality really struck us, when we were travelling in emerging countries to train teachers. Many of the teachers we met were doing the best they could. But if you don’t get proper teacher training and quality pedagogical knowledge, it’s hard to find a better way to do your job.
Coming from Finland, a land with excellent learning results and a strong ethos for equality, this seemed fundamentally unfair for us. We have been training teachers in various countries around the world and we strongly believe that every child should be entitled to quality education, no matter where they live.
We were haunted by the question:
During this era with unlimited flow of information and efficient communication technology, how is it possible, that we cannot offer basic pedagogical knowledge and tools for every teacher around the world?
Having several passionate discussions over this topic, we suddenly came up with a realization: even in the most remote, unprivileged areas, teachers very often have mobile phones. Even if they are lacking all the basic resources for teaching, they can still have a smart phone in their pocket. Could we make the knowledge about planning quality lessons available to all of them?
The mission was clear: we are going to create a mobile app for teachers around the world to help them to deliver better lessons!
With this idea of a mobile app, we soon realized that we wanted to equip the teachers with the understanding of learning process and with the tools to plan efficient and inspiring lessons themselves. We wanted to empower the teachers in unprivileged areas with this quote in mind:
“You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day. You teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime.” (Chinese proverb.)
How to make this vision happen? We realized that we needed to combine the pedagogical knowledge of Learning Scoop, Finland, with app development expertise. Team LessonApp was born.
We initially created LessonApp to help the teachers in emerging countries. But it turned out that also teachers working in already high quality education systems, wanted to use LessonApp. They told us that LessonApp would help them in their work, provide them with new ideas and inspiration, and save valuable time as well.
What we need is mutual learning and a global teacher community to support each other.
Our mission is to help teachers, who are the keys to quality education, and ultimately to provide every child a chance to experience the joy of learning!
With joy and passion,
Ellimaija, Johanna, Meri, Päivi and Tuomas
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