HANDS visit to Stockholm June 5th - success!

I hitted SvedenSkolan in Stockholm a little north to the citycenter in time. And had a joyfull and interesting talk and negotiation with Tobias(Teacher), Niklas Ahlstrom(VCEO), Gun Marie Wicksen (CEO), Agneta(assisting CEO. We ended our meeting by signing the “Letter of Intent”.

Coming to Stockholm and Svedenskolan was like coming home. It was not that frighting and different as visiting Budapest. First we discussed whether we should held the meeting in English or Skandinavian. We decided it should be hold in English.

Some facts
Svedenskolan has 70 pupils, it is based on TEACCH-pedagogical methods, the pupil/teacher ratio is similar to Egebakken in Denmark, the potentially involved teachers are invited to the meeting, and the management are nice and informal. And they used one PDA for one pupil. Equipped with asoftware “HANDI2” - well-known in Denmark.

Michael(Principal of Egebakken) evaluated beforehand, that Svedenskolan and Egebakken share many values and properties and after visiting SS I still have that viewpoint.

SS is going to be “my” testsite in HANDS and I feel very comfortable about that. HANDS is in good hands in Swedan skolan.

After I had made my presentation(view my slides here and more) I was gently asked to leave the room, so that they could make their own decision. Meanwhile I was given a tourdeforce of Svedenskolan by two very kind psychologists.

Critical comments on HANDS ideas

During the discussion afterwards Swedan Skolan raised several important issues or themes. The most valuable was:

• They commented that personal rights to own data is an ethical issue in HANDS which should be seriously considered. The laws might differ from one country to another.
  
  I fully agree. The ethical Advisory Board must work it out.
  
  

• They commented that working within HANDS could be timeconsuming and this should not be done at the expense of caretaking of the children.
  
  I fully agree. But the division between HANDS work and teaching will in many cases be difficult to draw.
  

I commented, that the level of IT-competences seemed week, and it should be considered how it could be raised. I suggested, that the management started(if the HANDS application goes through) out by using the pdas themselves.

Success - signing "The Letter of Intent"

As previously stated SvedenSkolan(management and teacher) signed the Letter of Intent. While Tobias(the teacher) commented, that many of the core ideas in HANDS is what he had been dreaming of.