Chancellor of the Government Milda Dargužaitė has addressed the participants on behalf of Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis, patron of the event, and stressed the necessity for Lithuania’s education system to become more open to innovations and technology experiments.
“Opening of Lithuania’s schools for technology innovations is among the Government priorities. The world sees rapid change; therefore conditions need to be created for people to adapt successfully to the smart environment. We want to offer more freedom for schools so that they could embrace innovation and experiments. It is important for the education community to understand the significance of innovation for the new generation”, said Chancellor Dargužaitė. She has also noted that events like this should be turned into a tradition at the Office of the Government.
The event hosted education innovation-friendly leaders of Lithuania: teachers, school principals, heads of associations, socially responsible businesses, businesses taking part in education, municipalities, and representatives from the Ministry of Education and Science. It is expected that the event participants will successfully spread their experience from the event in their communities.
“The aim of the forum is to bring together like-minded people to share their experience and to see the world’s popular innovations. We seek that these people become ambassadors for innovation development and spread their knowledge throughout the schools and education community of Lithuania”, said Deputy Director Gintarė Petkevičienė.
Foreign experts from Micro:bit Foundation, Chief of Education and Strategy Gareth James and Jo Claessens talked about Micro:bit: the origins of the project, difficulties, challenges, and solutions to them. Alex Wright presented encouragement for education innovations in Singapore, and Povilas Poderskis, a co-founder of Kompiuteriukų paramos fondas (micro-computer charity foundation), introduced objectives and planned actions of the foundation. The session of presentations was concluded by creativity movement representatives Stijn de Mill (Fab Lab Factory) and Carl Bärstad (Kids Hack Day, Quirkbot and Stawbees).
A famous Lithuanian musician Jurgis Didžiulis also took part at the forum, entertaining the forum participants with his improvised performance.
The labs were organised as part to the Maker Faire Education Forum by the Association of Technical Spaces and Knowledge Economy Forum.
