How Covid-19 Inspired BSP

The BSP coordinators’ meeting for this past spring had been scheduled to take place in Tallinn on 2-3 April. Due to the Covid-19 lockdowns in all participating countries, the exciting visits that the Estonian hosts had planned, were called off, and the key presentations and discussions that were part of the original seminar plan, were eventually delivered on-line.

Most of the Finnish BSP coordination group were planning to take part in the Tallinn meeting. With the corona pandemic escalating, we soon understood that it was not possible to convene anywhere – except on-line. Inspired by the giant leap taken by teachers and students to perform distance education as of mid-March, the Finnish team headed by the present BSP general coordinator Aira Undén-Selander, decided to suggest to the international coordinators of the BSP that the seminar should by no means be cancelled, but instead, it should be organised as a webinar. For me, this meant an unexpected chance to join the event, as I try to avoid international - or any longer physical - travel due to a number of reasons.

We also decided to suggest that, following the original plan, the webinar should spread over two days so all the essential presentations and dialogue could be carried out without a feeling of haste, allowing for thoughts and ideas to develop while we were together, on-line.

This was not the first time the BSP international coordinators met over the internet, but it was the first seminar that was taken on-line. As Aira successfully opened the webinar on the morning of the 2nd of April, I think we all shared a feeling that we were experiencing something both useful and unique. A webinar may lack the local flavor and the random discussions that you would have when you travel, and when you spend time over a dinner, or even a cup of coffee with your foreign colleagues. The bonuses came in a different format: it may be that we were more focused on the agenda, and then: all the BSP country coordinators were there – and I think this was partly as we didn’t have to find the time and the funding to travel. There was also the strange feeling of togetherness caused by the corona catastrophe: every one of us was able to share some experiences of the pandemic, and of work and education on-line. The fact that it was a two-day event meant also that we had the pleasure of meeting each other on two consecutive days. It was almost as if we had just spent the night at our hotels and met again at our cozy virtual meeting room, as we started working on the agenda of day 2
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General Coordinator Aira Undén-Selander opening the 1st ever BSP webinar on 2 April, 2020 (screenshot by author)

Then there was the direct effect of running a webinar together: it provided a straight-forward model for reforming parts of the modus operandi of the BSP. There is clearly a need for more, well-planned webinar meetings, and more importantly, webinars to bring together teachers and students to work on the relevant themes of making the Baltic Sea and life around it more sustainable. That would be cost-effective and equitable, and the potential number of participants would be so much more than it could be in traditional camps and other live get-togethers. The challenge is on us, the BSP national and international teams, to find ways that help people meet each other in a genuine, hands-on manner, even if they meet using the tools of digital collaboration.

Initial plans to start organising BSP webinars for teachers were drawn up, inspired by the Citizen Science program presented by Gedy Matisen. And so, the first teacher webinar is now planned to be organised in late October 2020; Tiina Sarisalmi of the Finnish team will inform on this. Before that, a mini webinar could be arranged between Finnish Unesco schools (the Finnish BSP schools will be among them) and the BSP international coordinators as part of the program of Finland's annual Unesco school meeting on 2nd September. As the chair of the ASPnet seminar, I am more than willing to take the initiative.

What would be your ideas for more virtual collaboration?

Paula Mattila
Counsellor of Education, National ASPnet Coordinator Finland
Finnish National Agency for Education
paula.mattila(at)oph.fi

Jon Urskov Pedersen at the BSP April webinar explaining how Unesco Schools and BSP activities are interlinked in Denmark - sounds great! (Screenshot by Tiina Sarisalmi).