CUSTOMER STORIES: Reactored platform in Karhusuo Primary School in Finland

Reactored language teaching platform used in tablet
Karhusuo primary school is a school located in southern Finland with 290 students aged from 7 to 12 years old. Compared to other places around the world, its size might be small but in Finland, it is among the average as the whole country only has a population of only around 5.5 million.
 
Mervi Pohja works as the Vice Principal in this school and is a keen promoter of Sanako’s online language teaching platform – Reactored. We asked her why using an online language teaching platform, like Reactored, makes sense for her school? 
 
She says that bringing teaching online has been a growing trend in education these days because it removes the constraint of physical distance, encompasses usage of multimedia and inspirational learning content while being a potential way to save resources for schools.
 
For language teaching, another apparent benefit is that students can increase their practice time without fear of embarrassment, as compared to when they speak out loud in front of the whole class in a traditional setting. Before learning about Reactored, Mervi had already known about some other applications for online language teaching and learning. However, these products normally included advertisements or had to be used on a specific platform or specific devices to function seamlessly. Reactored, on the other hand, is ad-free. Moreover, being a browser-based solution, it does not require any installation effort and runs well on a variety of devices ranging from mobile phones, tablets to laptops. At the same time, what Mervi needed was a product that allowed her to create content of her own besides using its existing content library, which was exactly what Reactored offered. Hence, upon knowing that the solution also offered a free trial license period, Mervi Pohja, a teacher in English and German, decided to give it a try right away.  

 

How has Karhusuo Primary School’s experience with Reactored been so far?

When starting to use Reactored, Mervi was amazed by the number of languages available there. It surely covered all the ones that she needed when Reactored accommodated up to 16 different languages.

She also valued the possibility to diversely use all one’s different senses when learning as the solution supported all four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. Inside Reactored, teachers can enrich their content, besides simple text, with videos, audios, and images, stimulating students in various ways when learning languages. Its unique spell-checker engine and instant feedback mechanism are especially important for students practicing spelling. Talking about this, Mervi commented:

“The versatility of the solution also makes sure that it suits early learners and native speakers alike, whose spelling still needs practice. The solution is also a perfect fit for second language acquisition or special needs education.”

Mervi also values Reactored as a user-friendly platform as her students didn’t have any problems familiarizing themselves with it. The students were also motivated to work on exercises more when discovering that they could use the speech-recognition functionality instead of writing the answers down themselves. Indeed, the platform proved to be really fun to interact with from students’ point of view especially.

 

Monitoring students’ progress – How Reactored makes teachers’ lives easier?

Mervi appreciates that Reactored allows language teachers to create or import content easily. In addition, what she also finds valuable is how teachers can easily monitor students’ progress and level, which surely facilitates and supports both the teachers’ work and the learning of the students. She was very satisfied with how she can easily see students’ progress in vocabulary practice.

Reactored’s benefits do not only apply to normal exercise but also exams. To Mervi, administering exams through Reactored is a nice addition to traditional exams. It’s a useful method in vocabulary tests and, at the same time, actual long form exams. Giving her final comment about the product, Mervi says: 

“After one year of using Reactored, I’m happy that we have already a license for another year acquired. Now I know my students will receive personalised and diverse language tuition both at the school and at their homes.”

-Mervi Pohja, Vice Principal from Karhusuo Primary School from Finland

Mervi Pohja is a teacher using Reactored

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