A Bitrthday Gift at Tallinn!

24 de mar. de 2015
4 min de leitura

EDUCON - Global Engineering Education Conference - Tallin - Estonia

Hello everybody,

This post is to present you our experience at EDUCON - Global Engineering Education Conference. This is a IEEE conference and this year it took place in Tallinn, Estonia. The theme of this year conference was “Engineering Education towards Excellence and Innovation”. The conference was opened by the president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

EDUCON - 2015

Tallinn University of Technology

President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves

The length of the conference was from March, 18th to 20th, but we arrived in Tallinn in March, 16th, at night, because in March 17th they have prepared a specific program only for us, Brazilians. It was a great gift, especially because it was my Birthday!!!

Well, the nature also give us a gift because when we were knowing the city at night we could watch the aurora borealis in the city, as you can see below, something that is not common!!!

Birthday

Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis

Tallinn is a beautiful city! It is the capital of Estonia and occupies an area of 159.2 km2. The population is about 430,000 inhabitants and the city is situated on the northern coast of the country. It is quite near from Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, 80 km far from it. We went by boat from Helsinki, and the trip took about 2 hours. Tallinn's Old Town is wonderful, with medieval buildings. It’s listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I took some photos from the Old Town, that you can see below.

Old Town - Tallinn

Old Town - Tallinn

Old Town - Tallinn

EDUCON - 2015 was at Tallinn University of Technology (TUT - http://www.tut.ee). TUT is the is the only technical university in Estonia and was established in 1918. It is a modern and international university with a multicultural student body. There are students from over 60 countries. The IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, in 2015, was the sixth of the series of conferences that rotates among central locations in IEEE Region 8, Europe, Middle East and North Africa. It was a surprise for us, because there was a very rich opportunity to learn about international practices and to develop our networking.

EDUCON - http://www.educon-conference.org/educon2015/

We have started, in first day, with a seminar related to education methods, like student centered approaches, constructivism, types of students’ learning styles and project based approaches. Tiia Ruutmann has presented us a initial lecture about curricula structure needs and the importance of developing strategies to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teaching. It was possible to understand the importance to define a good curricula, to link companies to university and students and to use active methods of teaching and learning. The interaction between students in active approaches and in courses that are related to their professional life can motivate and attract them, as well as keep them studying and developing their careers.

Developing a Curricula.

At the conference, we could had contact with teachers and researchers from 43 different countries talking and discussing new methods for education. In addition to European countries, the conference also received guests from USA, Canada, Brazil, Ecuador, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Singapore, Philippines, Nigeria, New Zealand, Malaysia, Panama, Cuba, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries. The experience was great and we could get in touch with many experiences attending presentations of full papers and workshops.

One example could be named Mektory, a place we have visited (pictures below). Mektory is a link between university and companies and an opportunity to students that want to develop their own business initiatives. We could visit labs from different areas: 3D printers, mechanical, furniture production made of wood, physics, e-learning and Arduino robots. I could even experience a research with Eye Tracker, a technology that capture the eye position to analyse data related to many areas like advertising, for instance. Using this kind of technology is possible to analyse if one product or ad is attractive to customers or not. They also have some labs sponsored by companies like Samsung, Ericsson and others. It is a good example of integrating University and companies.

Mektory

Mektory - Samsung Academy

Mektory

Other interesting experience was named Future Classroom Lab, that is one initiative of HITSA (partner of EDUCON). In this classroom, future technologies, mainly ICT (information and communication technology). Not only computers, but a high-tech learning environment, with video cameras, tables, integrated sound system, smart boards and all facilities that one learning environment could offer to students.

HITSA - Future Classroom

HITSA - Future Classroom - Hands on

HITSA - Future Classroom - The winner

Two other goals I have achieved, besides this important learning time at Tallin. First one was to attend some presentations regarding my project in Brazil and my Doctoral Thesis: using student centered approaches to teach, like constructivism based approaches, Problem Based Learning and Project Based Learning. Second one was attending a workshop with the editor of IEEE Transactions on Education, that gave us many directions related to writing and publishing papers in that journal.