Tuesday, January 16

Arcada, 12:34
I felt ready for the cold this morning when I left the house. The bus arrived on time, unlike yesterday, so I got on feeling ready for a day listening to presentations.
We started again at 9:15 and heard the remainder of the student presentations. We then paused for coffee, and after that we met downstairs where two groups presented the Innovation Games they had invented last week with Tomas. They had not had time to present them and so they played them now. One combined vacuum-cleaning and golf to an interesting effect. The other combined paper aeroplanes and tennis in a way that had some students doubled up with laughter.
Back in the classroom I showed the chart I had made of keywords from the presentations, and suggested that this might prove useful when the class formed itself into teams. I then explained how the teams will work and gave them two hours to form into teams and prepare a mission statement for their team, in the form of a ninety second elevator pitch that addresses three questions. What do we want to do? Why? How?
While the students have lunch and prepare themselves, I take the opportunity to borrow a screwdriver and assembly my wooden banana stand. I then place the bananas that I have bought onto it and stand back to admire its sleek practicality. It certainly does hold bananas.
I will remove and eat one, and the others will remain firmly in place. I feel that I have spent 1.50€ well.
The students will message Tomas to say that they do not need two hours, so I will start the afternoon session thirty minutes earlier than planned. Tomas has a meeting in the centre of Helsinki so I will hear all the elevator pitches alone. Only one group will manage anything like ninety seconds. The rest will take anything up to five minutes.
Since we intend this to start the inspiration process I will let them ramble, in order that they can get their initial idea out. I will then make comments. The afternoon will pass in this way.
We will finish with me explaining the details of the process that will take them to next Monday, when we will meet again at 10:00 for a detailed feedback session. For the rest of the week we will simply have brief meetings to monitor groups’ progress.
I will go home in the cold. In the evening I will play with the cat.
While we stayed in Kerala Irma got out of the habit of watching the 22:00 news and she has not yet got back into it. We will look out at the cold and dark and both decide to go to bed about 21:30.