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The Swedish school where children are creating their own futures with digital tech

Keeping up with the latest trends in digital tech can seem an impossible task. But for one group the constant flow of new products, features and releases is simply the norm: children.

The Swedish school where children are creating their own futures with digital tech
Photo: Futuraskolan

So, how is this reality changing schooling today? The Local learns how one leading network of schools and pre-schools in Stockholm is using technology to unleash “student-driven learning” – where children thrive by following their personal passions and have less fear of making mistakes.

Looking for bilingual English and Swedish schooling with a focus on new technology? Find out more about Futuraskolan International’s ethos

The tools of the trade: from pencils to Chromebooks

The new technologies in today’s classrooms may not appear to have much in common with the humble pencil. But both offer great opportunities for children to learn and feel inspired, says Lindsey Andersson, the Canadian-born ICT coordinator at Futuraskolan International.

Suspicions that digital tools distract schoolchildren from learning the basics are mistaken, she says. 

“The pencil is a fantastic tool but how many people use it to its full potential? You can hand write, shade, outline, sketch, draw, blend, count, build or even use it to put your hair up,” says Andersson. “Likewise, digital devices aren’t just for watching YouTube or playing video games. They’re also tools with fantastic potential.”

The Futuraskolan network includes 14 pre-schools and schools in Greater Stockholm for children aged up to 15. Lessons are carried out in English and Swedish.

Preschool children are introduced to everything from iPads to virtual reality glasses and robots. Children in the early school grades also regularly use iPads, typically moving on to Chromebooks in around grade seven. 

“Most students feel it’s easier to be creative with Chromebooks as they get older,” says Andersson. While the schools still have projectors, most now use Apple TVs and Chromecast, she adds, and many have invested in 3D printers.

The future of schooling: find out more about the Futuraskolan network and its innovative and international approach to educating your child 

Freedom not fear: learning through play

Digital tools help remove a fear of making mistakes that can otherwise be stifling, says Niki Christofi, who teaches grade four children at Futuraskolan International Rådan in Sollentuna. She says children working on paper often feel one mistake would ruin their work. 

Photo: Futuraskolan

“Now, mistakes can be erased by just pressing undo,” says Christofi, who is of Portuguese and Cypriot heritage. The result? Children feel more freedom to experiment, leading them to discover skills and knowledge they may otherwise have missed out on. “ICT allows children to use their full creativity and potential,” says Christofi.

Digital devices also mean children can learn in the way they find easiest. “Some children want to read to comprehend, others prefer to listen,” she adds. “With iPads, they have these options.”

It’s also simple and fast for Futuraskolan’s teachers to get permission to introduce apps into the classroom. While children in previous generations may have had no idea what a graphic designer does, those at Futuraskolan use the design app Canva to create posters, brochures, and more.

The app also allows those who are more confident to create from a blank page and others to use templates as a starting point. “Children in Grade 3 used it to make postcards to sell for our big fundraising day for our Global Citizenship project,” says Andersson. “They took nature photographs and edited the photos using the app.” 

Children also love the Algodoo science app, says Christofi. It allows you to design experiments such as testing whether balls of the same size but different materials will sink or float. “One flies because it’s made of helium,” she says. “Then they want to know ‘why does this gas go up?’”

Andersson agrees that digital technology is playing a vital role in supporting personal development. “When you learn through play, you don’t realise you’re learning,” she says. “Children get to practice skills like spelling, writing, language, maths, and music.”

Introducing iPads to the classroom has had radical benefits for students with learning disabilities, dyslexia, or problems with hand-eye coordination, according to Andersson. “They speak their sentence and the iPad magically writes it for them; suddenly they’re just as good at handwriting as their peers!” 

Lindsey Andersson and Niki Christofi. Photo: Futuraskolan

Tomorrow’s world: how passion feeds purpose

Schools should fully embrace new technologies “to keep up with the cultural revolution we’re experiencing in the digital age,” believes Tom Callahan, Futuraskolan’s American CEO.

In doing so, they can inspire children by allowing them to go “grab onto their passion” and go deeper into the topics they care most about: this is what he terms “student-driven learning”. 

Teachers at Futuraskolan need regular workshops to ensure they have the know-how to support children who grew up with wi-fi and smartphones in this new style of learning.

So, what will the future hold for the kids from Futuraskolan? “We’re likely preparing our children for jobs that don’t even exist right now,” says Andersson. “What we do know is that we need to work with problem-solving skills and abstract thinking, no matter what.” 

Children also need to be ready to take up global opportunities “that will be available to them while sitting at home”.

“Think of the people who created Spotify or Skype – they just made these jobs up through entrepreneurship,” adds Andersson. “These children have a fantastic opportunity to create whatever they want.” 

Interested in bilingual English and Swedish schooling with a focus on new technology? Find out more about Futuraskolan International – and the admissions process for each of its schools and preschools

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‘Will they pass as British?’: The challenges of raising bilingual kids in Sweden

Twelve years into bringing up his bilingual children in Sweden, Richard Orange wonders if they will ever feel or come across as wholly British.

'Will they pass as British?': The challenges of raising bilingual kids in Sweden

We’re twelve years into raising our bilingual Swedish-British children and the outcome remains uncertain.

My ten-year-old son speaks with an almost comically English accent, like a diminutive Hugh Grant, while my twelve-year-old girl has absorbed an American twang, adopting the YouTube English used by her the rest of her girl gang.

Both still occasionally trip up on phrasal verbs, which often use different prepositions in Swedish from: they might “look on the TV”, for instance. When they were younger, they would create hybrid words, mixing the English “milk” and the Swedish “mjölk” into “myilk”.   

But of the children I know living in Sweden with one British and one Swedish parent, my own probably closest to passing for British.

This is entirely by accident.

When our eldest was born, I was 37 and had only been in Sweden six months, so could barely speak a word of the language, and like many people who start learning a language in middle age, I’m still far from fluent. My Swedish wife, on the other hand, attended American and international schools between the ages of six and seventeen, so for her speaking English comes as naturally as Swedish.

As a result, English has been our main language: in the home, when we’re out and about and very often, when we’re socialising, as we’ve made friends with other families with one English-speaking parent. 

My wife usually speaks Swedish with the children when she’s alone with them, but not always, and if I’m in the room, she’ll often switch subconsciously to English. When the children speak alone with one another, I’m not sure if they have a preference, but if anything English is slightly dominant. 

The only person who suffers from the amount of English spoken at home is me. I’ve tried to switch our evening meals to Swedish to help improve my fluency, but it’s never stuck. 

School and society

My wife’s parents had to work hard to stop her and her brother speaking English at home when they were growing up in Africa, so she sometimes feels guilty that English is so dominant for us. 

She needn’t worry, though, as no Swede talking to our children would ever suspect them of being anything other than Swedish. She insisted on their going to the local municipal school, rather than to an international school, so school and after-school – where they spend roughly half their waking lives – has been almost entirely in Swedish.

I say “almost entirely” as my daughter, in particular, speaks English with her friends, who have parents from Ghana and Cameroon. Sweden’s system of mother-tongue tuition also means that all the English-speaking children in the school are brought together once a week for a lesson. I’m not sure how much the teaching helps their English reading and writing, but it certainly helps bring them together. 

More recently, I’ve been surprised to discover that even my children’s schoolfriends with two Swedish parents are starting to speak English when they hang out. Indeed, the level of English spoken by my daughter’s classmates is rapidly catching up with her own.

For Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes, English is so dominant, almost everyone absorbs it in the end. 

Passing for British

That’s why for me, it’s not really enough for my children to be bilingual in Swedish and English, as that more or less goes for practically everyone their age growing up in Sweden. I want people from the UK who meet them to think of them as British. 

It came as a shock when I first realised this might not happen.

My daughter was still a toddler, and I was interviewing an Australian in Sweden about taking parental leave for an Australian newspaper. When I spoke to his children, then seven and nine, their English was heavily accented and quite limited. I then discovered that a couple of our adult Swedish friends, both of whom spoke English with a definite Swedish accent, had grown up with a British father.  

I was surprised how upset it made me that my daughter started speaking with an American accent, just as I’ve been surprised at how important it is to me that they like Marmite, the bitter salty yeast spread beloved of Brits. I tried to laugh the accent off when we returned to the UK to meet my family and my daughter, understandably, took this badly. A couple of years later, she still resents me for it.

The main thing I’ve done to try and make them pass for British is to return to the UK and stay with my brother and his three similarly aged daughters over Easter and Christmas as often as I can. They are quite close to their cousins, and for me it’s an important link to home.  

From the start, I’ve tried to expand their vocabulary by reading them English children’s books every night, and a few years ago, we started ordering The Beano, a venerable British children’s comic which has been going since 1938. It’s been a surprise hit. For the last two years, they have competed weekly over who gets the first chance to read it. Both read it from cover to cover. 

What to do next? 

For my children to pass as British or even to feel British, will, I suspect, require an extended stay in the UK in their teens or early 20s: a term at a sixth-form college, a semester or more at university, or, like so many of their Swedish colleagues, a few months working in a shop or pub somewhere in the UK. 

It might not work. I’ve heard of half-British children who have gone to the UK to study or work and felt very far from home.

If that happens, if they come back feeling less British than they did before they went, will it matter?

Right now, I feel it will. I will feel like I’ve failed to pass on something important, that they’ve lost a part of their identity I wanted them to have. But with any luck if it does, by that time, I will myself have become too Swedish to care. 

What’s your experience raising a bilingual child in Sweden? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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