Our next piece of international news comes from Malaysia, where Moomin Language School has been in use in the village of Selama at the border of the states of Perak and Kedah. Below our representative in Malaysia tells us about Moomin Language School in Malaysia.
Moomin Language School kicked off in Selama when I met the head of education department of Taiping, Perak. He is in charge of 148 schools, and he wanted to see Moomin Language School in action. That is why we began a project in one of the schools, a middle-sized school where the majority of students have Malay as their mother tongue. The school has about 30 tablets in use.
The service is in use in one preschool class and one first grade class. At the beginning, we held an information meeting with the parents, who were very interested in the service. The new service and using technology for learning seemed to be both exciting and slightly unnerving to the parents, and we had many good conversations with them.
We have held demo lessons together with the teachers in order to guide them in organizing the playful lessons. Children practice new vocabulary and grammar using the learning application for a week, and then they have a playful lesson dealing with the same theme. Learning was apparent already during the first playful lesson, when the children were able to correctly answer the teacher’s questions.
All in all, the feedback has been positive. The head teacher, teachers and most parents are excited about the new way of teaching and they are eager to apply what they have learned. The fact that the service is based on Finnish education principles has really aided the teachers’ and parents’ openness towards the service and their willingness to try it. A certain type of Finnish humbleness is also apparent in the service, which in turn helps us create strong, positive relationships with the schools and homes.