Abstract—Digitalization is changing our everyday lives and
all sectors of human activities. The education system is amidst of
this change. There is a growing demand for digital learning
services and applications. Due to this underlying societal and
technological change the education must be regarded as an
ecosystem, where the different interacting organizations and
individuals co-create applications and services. Forceful
introduction of information and communication technologies
(ICT) to schools and classrooms, while at the same time
maintaining traditional processes and practices, creates a
potential source of inefficiency, ineffectiveness and poor quality.
Many schools and teachers complain that insufficient ICT
equipment, such as interactive whiteboards and laptops, are
major obstacles to effectively utilize ICT. This study presents a
chronological development process of the Dream School
-concept from Finland. The main purpose of the Dream School
-project was to build an engaging and ubiquitous learning
environment that utilizes a bottom-up approach to support
students’ growth and learning according to their needs - as well
as according to identified societal future needs. The technologies
exploited included open source code applications, open
platforms, server -oriented and cloud -based ICT architectures.
These technologies were developed and implemented in
collaboration with private and public partners. This paper
addresses three major aspects of innovation which define the
nature of the Dream School –concept: 1) setting a vision for a
future school, 2) building the ecosystem capable to deliver ICT
services as a turnkey package; 3) innovative procurement. The
impact of Dream School implementation on education system,
decision makers and public-private partnerships is discussed.
Index Terms—Education, innovation, ecosystem, school,
procurement, ICT, service, open-source, scaling-up.
P. Leviäkangas is with the University of Oulu, PO Box 4610, 90014,
Finland (e-mail: pekka.leviakangas@oulu.fi).
A. Schneitz is with Elisa Plc., PO Box 00061 ELISA, Finland (e-mail:
allan.schneitz@elisa.fi).
A. Aapaoja is with the Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., PO
Box 1000, 02044 VTT, Finland (e-mail: aki.aapaoja@vtt.fi).
Cite: Pekka Leviäkangas, Allan Schneitz, and Aki Aapaoja, "The Evolution of Finnish “Dream School” – Via Public Entrepreneurship from Innovative Concepts to National Scale-up," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 508-515, 2016.