Sanako – A Finnish EdTech success story

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Headquartered in Turku, a city on the South-west coast of Finland, Sanako is proud of its Nordic heritage and history. Founded in 1961, under the name Tandberg Educational, the business has since grown to a dominant market leading position with Sanako language teaching solutions now being used in over 110 countries and 50,000 classrooms (Check some of our customer testimonials clicking here). Today Sanako is one of the leading EdTech companies from Finland.

This means that already millions of people around the world have acquired parts of their language skills using Sanako solutions.

A key factor in that success has been how the company’s pedagogical and technological approach is deliberately built upon globally-renowned Finnish learning models. So, let’s have a look where are the similarities between Sanako’s work and Finland’s highly-ranked PISA-topping approach to education?

 

Finnish innovation in EdTech and pedagogy

One of the key reasons behind Finland’s success on the global education stage relates to a clear focus on driving excellent learning outcomes. Those outcomes are the result of a research-based approach to developing pedagogy and a willingness to allow the education sector to innovate to achieve those outcomes. Similarly, Sanako has an ongoing innovation programme and tests products with our customers to provide the best range of language teaching solutions. This combination brilliantly supports the creation of excellent curricula / learning products alongside first-rate learning environments and processes.

Like Sanako, Finland’s national education system also puts teachers at the heart of its success. High-quality training, professional freedom, and trust are essential ingredients of national educational high-performance. Likewise, Sanako recognises the importance that all products enable teachers to easily and flexibly incorporate their own learning content, their own resources and their own teaching style. There’s no one size fits all approach here!

That clear focus on creativity also manifests itself through highly innovative teaching methods and through a strong nationwide startup and tech sector. Brands like Angry Birds and Nokia demonstrate the traditional strength of the Finnish gaming, software and technology industries. These companies have created highly fertile conditions for building cutting-edge digital learning solutions like Sanako, along with a teaching community who are open to using new technologies to improve educational performance.

Sanako is also involved in the startup community and arranges hackatons and innovation competitions to screen the best EdTech startups and innovations.

Finally, all Finnish educators are focused on using education as a tool to reduce and level out social inequality. As a result, all students receive highly personalised learning plans to address any areas of underperformance. Sanako follows a similar approach – allowing teachers to deliver targeted resources to individual students, and to use gamification and personalisation features in some of our products to drive student engagement and motivation.

Given Finland’s exceptional global education reputation, it’s no surprise to see national education exports booming. With customers ranging from Thailand to the USA, Sanako and its 100+ dedicated partners and resellers across the globe are leading the charge!

 

If you’d like to find out how Sanako’s focus on Finnish best practice in pedagogy and technology could help your institution in language teaching, click here to contact us for a free product demo.

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