Lars Persen
Location: Norway
Lars Persen is pedagogical leader at Scandec Systemer, Norwegian distributor for Promethean. He delivers seminars for school leaders and owners about leading in technology-rich learning environments and provides tailored professional development with a technological and pedagogical approach for kindergartens, focusing on innovation and collaboration.
“My passion is education. I want to see students given the best opportunities possible, wherever they come from. And I also want to see policy makers have the right focus when adjusting education systems. We need to make children create, master and explore – and in a modern world they also need to unlearn and learn again. Not everything can be measured, especially not in early years. My participation in Education Fast Forward might not be important, but I hope that I can offer my participation to the debate of improving and renewing our education systems. I most certainly look forward to exciting future debates, the synergy of multiple voices and how they can catalyze local actions for learning improvements.”
Lars served four years as an officer in the Norwegian armed forces, before he worked as teacher and school leader for 16 years. He has worked in Norwegian state schools and in an international IB-school in Germany. He has a 4 year teacher education and later studied school management.
He has participated in European projects focusing on Education for sustainable development and school leadership and also served on the NMC Horizon Technology Outlook for Scandinavia 2015 advisory board.
Lars is a passionate photographer and loves to travel.
Areas of educational interest: Ed tech, collaboration, connectivity, professional development, social relations and equity in education. I am passionate about making teachers and school leaders have perspectives reaching outside their classrooms and beyond the students’ final exams.
Rethinking education is about making teaching and learning fit the needs for 21st Century skills and social formation in a rapidly changing society and globalized labor market. Connectivity and social networking can bring education to where it is not, and change students from consumers to producers, providing them with the ability to analyze, interpret, collaborate and distribute.
It is also about making use of technology tangible for teachers – every teacher need to master what they learn, just like students do. We need to provide high quality tech training services to teachers at all levels, so that they are given real freedom of method they need to deliver the best learning for the 21st Century. As it is now, many teachers feel that technology is running ahead of them and they don’t have the time or the power to chase it. Facilitating improved teacher training is crucial if we want to align our education systems to the rapidly changing work life of our time.
Why I’m involved in EFF: Even if our gene pools are set from cultural experiences that are different from each other, education is globalized. Good practice somewhere is good practice everywhere. We need platforms where we can share, debate and develop what quality education is, or at least should be.
Education Fast Forward is the only platform I know of that has to power to reimagine the whole idea of what learning is, and challenge status quo in education. By gathering educational thinkers from all parts of the world, EFF also brings equity and equality in education to the debate. To me equal opportunities is the most significant global goal; to bring people out of poverty, to enhance health conditions and to prevent young people being radicalized or criminalized away from a society in which they would have a better possibility of succeeding, if given the chance they deserve.