Norway workouts new horizons with technology education as the oil market sags

Norway workouts new horizons with technology educationAs the oil market sags

 

Norway - a few miles south of Oslo in a sunny classroom, playing a video game and first graders who stood in front of Jean-Baptiste Huynh merry class.

Designer and teacher of the game, Huynh and number 1-10 Dragon box creatures who show their new number, as different sizes you eat "can" show off each other. The resulting creature represents a total of two. After a brief lesson, Huynh set students free of charge. They are issued by the school for their offices and tablet computers arrived and got to work.
It was mid-October, and the number Dragonbox either here or elsewhere, on the Apple iTunes Store has been released so far. Try it this way first of its kind in the world, was three feet long beta testing.
These students go to school in an interesting time. Much like the rest of the world, themselves chasing Norway and Finland, and in the field of education neighboring country's success seems to have resonance far beyond its shores. At the same time, the country that threatens to dwarf the recent slowdown of the economic crisis depends on passing oil. In response, several schools, and the better part of doubling down on technical equipment, to teach students to improve in all areas went to see.
They do not know their source, even if already Norwegian teachers routinely use products where Atlantic educational technology, is making waves on the other side of the local emerging field Feeding the demand for good.
Educational technology is the industry's emergence comes at a critical time: oil GDP Norway accounts for about a quarter, analysts predict. But oil prices to record levels in the past year fell by more than half. If alive bankers said in a speech in New York last March, the player Øystein Olsen, governor of the Central Bank of Norway Norwegian economy "a lot of oil fields will adapt to lower demand". "We support the development of the economy to be more dependent on growth in other sectors."
Said Maria Amelie, technical writer Oslo oil and gas pushed innovation in the last 40 years, but the shift. "What happens now that oil prices are falling, and we have to start something new that everyone can see that," she said.
Emily and other technology for the natural place to start. Norway already digitally enhanced dramatically: almost the whole country is connected to the Internet. In a country of about five million people, 3 million people use Facebook.
A large part of Norway than anywhere else in Europe is a smartphone. A study in 2013 by Google in the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and the world's fifth behind Singapore, in which more than two-thirds owned by the Norwegian smartphone. In contrast, Finland, home of Nokia, the smartphone includes ownership of only 46%. In the United States, it is 56%.
"I think we have a way to early adopters," said Emily.

"Norway" American Dream "is in fact a country where it is possible. You have a lot of possibilities," she said.
Results Until recently, I did not compete with the award, is a culture emerging in place to start the race. In Norway, a plumber can earn more than doctors. "But the oil crisis, climate change and create new businesses, more entrepreneurial spirit and to stir up people are used to challenge."
Norway, but "- the ones that are very shy high technology and research and is part of the culture - in product marketing of the products we make are really good, selling is not very good. The monument to the learning For our kind of culture very modest, "said
The oil crisis is a luxury shame.
Rolf Assev for investors in a recent competition winners from among the dozens of emerging technology companies fist, and it is half of a year ago, which was founded by people that have been or estimates was fitted with a noisy evening "pitch meeting" in the room from the beginning of the Oslo laboratory appeared two years, they were in the oil industry.
"In the last two years - is amazing," he said. "Oil prices rose to the post last year, we hired in the oil sector used to be, the best people, and people are very positive, which started to become entrepreneurs . "


Was not hurt, and that Nokia, the Finnish technology giant, and loss of employment for the past three years. In 2014, also calls for Microsoft Business Sales bleeding did not stop.
"Nokia was not at all the people working anymore, they came up with something," Assev said.
Many people came here. Since 2012 or so, a small group appeared, but quickly out of four each with a focus on education technology companies around Oslo. Huynh video games, including small company, we want to know - Assev 64 supports early work and created many of the 19 other company has invested in the incubator, attracted to.
In 2012, we as young as 4 years old children is studying algebraic thinking, which first match Dragonbox, scored a great success with a need to know.
A high price for the game on the App Store - and the results of the game at $ 4.99 and up, in the United States alone, more than half a million copies sold. For a period of time, the gaming sensation Angry Birds Dragonbox was more popular in Norway.
Last year, Huynh and colleagues about 8 million algebra problems to solve together, to spend a week in the country to explain to the children - and their allies who need Washington to provide more help for students , Zoran Popovic, a researcher at the University of air Dragonbox called. He ended problem which almost 391 000 Washington, with students in the state in 2013, "Algebra Challenge" little underwent tests. After a few months in Wisconsin, about 645.000 students solve problems.
He Huynh, a child psychiatrist in Norway married a French Vietnamese, who admits that - Assev was an investor in a hurry, "Technology for Education opened my eyes." The company began in Oslo Huynh's house.
Laboratory startup complex is near the office occupies the basement of the University of Oslo. Often the neighborhood on Friday with the best type of coffee by providing free beer attracts potential talent.
"There are smart students who come here and free beer and talk," Assev Huynh Friday over a beer company hired four people that recalling, said.
A regulator technology for a long time - the Opera, the Norwegian browser maker on personnel, was 10 - the ability to apply them in the technology world Assev ideas is not as important. "There are a lot of ideas. For us, the way they invest in companies that we allow them to work with us for three months, we know them. We how it works, how they get up early and how late they were working, and how they work smart. They know us. It is a good starting point for investment. "
Other efforts to support laboratory startup: application developers and researchers is a kind of dating service, created by Ingrid Somdal-Åmodt Vinje, a graduate student of education in education. It is designed to quickly evaluate their products to researchers, applications, games, or other educational equipment makers is to develop a way.
The educational technology companies "want to know their product works," she said. "They put on a pedestal and want to test the product - I think this is a brave and also to sell it to them that it is necessary to think."
Service to meet face-to-face about a dozen researchers and companies have been set for the first time in December.
Perhaps the fastest growing educational technology teachers and students in the Norwegian export any material they want and allowing him to create interactive quizzes based Kahoot!, Platform game. Students participate in live classroom sessions, such as mobile phones or portable devices use the pills, and the results appear instantly on the screen class.
"It really is about having fun - you're joking, and when things," the company's CEO, Johan brand, recently told a gathering of teachers in Oslo.
Game industry veteran - - a brand is and always deeper than a platform to engage students in the school to help in a way that provides the Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy, he previously worked in the United Kingdom .
"People fall in love with it and some are going to learn, it's a lifelong commitment to improving its own needs and not just pass the tests," he said.
Game Huynh company incubated company in 2012, now London and Austin, Texas, has offices in more than 150 countries and boasts 40 million players. But the brand is quite open about the fact that, for that matter, colleagues, represents a kind of pledge beets, or, classroom teacher, created by participation in sports. As much as anything, which is key to the success of the company.
"You're not supposed to do something with their teacher are," he said. "You're not supposed to do that with my friends are few."
Is essential for a healthy educational environment, the harmony class, to build.
"In the long term, and we are building a culture class," Brand said. "Culture eats any strategy."
Oslo Elvebakken secondary school one morning recently and changing grade students, I preached among boys stood quintet, they gathered around a laptop computer and a video game in orbit at a distance of a few feet After the outcome of stock trading is talking about moments, and it seemed as Deputy Director Knut Roald Halvard soldered to the circuit board and another student computer power supply built.
The students are expected to work together in Elvebakken. Hedda used as an aid in study, Facebook chat group, on Marie Johansen Stene- 0.16, 33 students in her homeroom class is done by, "said Bonds, like us." "There were thousands of unread messages," she said, but a day before the trial was recently noted that a little bit of hand. "I really did not take a very long time."
Till then? "An hour or two."


Students can take an independent study of the day - - Roald flexible school schedule he said that they are in control of their time, allowing them to feel. Most, however, they've got more than enough of the property, even when you choose to come to school, "because they want to."
Indeed, recent international comparison found that only 87% Norwegian student performance on basic skills and above average over the world, from Iceland to 90% the second "I feel happy at school, while".
Like many schools in Oslo, and Elvebakken invested heavily in technology. Routinely come through the age of 19, and students who take the laptop to school, and the school was recently built chemistry laboratory, where old electrical transfer station across the street, and improbably, An experimental tank has expanded to huge concrete wave.
"It comes to technology, we are all the time in the continuous revolution," Roald said.