KIVO ‘Nursery’ for Education Projects Held in Perm
The Perm campus of HSE University has hosted the KIVO Nursery pre-accelerator for educational projects. The projects will be presented at the KIVO 2022 Competition of Innovations in Education. Dozens of innovators from the Perm region took part, pitching their projects and receiving feedback from experts. The event also featured the presentation of the preliminary results of the HSE University Institute of Education expedition ‘The Ecosystem of Educational Innovations in the Perm Region’.
The headline guest of KIVO Nursery was Arina Nuriakhmetova, co-founder of the projects Geek Teachers and Smenka and finalist of the 2018 competition. She spoke to the innovators in attendance about her experience of education start-ups and how not to be afraid to launch your own projects—even in uncertain times.
Among the projects presented at the pre-accelerator was Lingvateka, a community of specialists engaged in the development of speech and communication skills in children and the creation of methodological and didactic resources for developing speech and alternative communication. The project was created by Olga Goncharova-Tverskaya, Associate Professor at Perm State Humanitarian Pedagogical University.
‘Researching the City’ is a project by Yana Kryukova and Tatyana Vakhrina, teachers from Gymnasium No. 3 in Perm. The aim of the project is to use the urban environment to spur research interest in school students. The project combines the opportunity to visit interesting locations in Perm, complete assignments, consult with local experts, and engage in debates and the defence of research projects.
The project ‘Children Visiting Children’ aims to involve school children in the hospitality industry and the development of tourism products for very young travellers. It has already gained popularity in the Perm region and was recently presented to Governor Dmitry Makhonin. The decision has been made to increase the scale of the project.
Other promising projects presented at the pre-accelerator include aptitude testing for children, a new method of studying foreign languages, a ‘festival’ of personal practices for overcoming isolation, and more.
‘The “Nursery” showcases the vivid spirit of the Perm region. The creators of numerous projects, including local teachers, consider the region to be a place of power where they can create new opportunities for developing tourism and utilising the educational potential of museums. The Perm region is an example that demonstrates the huge potential of grassroots educational innovations in Russia’s regions. And thanks to the “Nursery”, Perm’s innovators could get to know each other, network, and have their work evaluated,’ said Alexandra Semenova, producer of the KIVO Competition of Innovations in Education.
Olga Bogdanova, Director of the Perm Doll Museum, said, ‘It is surprising that we were all living in Perm and implementing similar ideas, but didn’t know about each other.’ Lyutsiya Mutagarova, head of the ‘Sirius’ sports club at Gymnasium No. 33 in Perm, also said that the pre-accelerator allowed her to make new contacts for future collaboration on educational projects.
The event also featured the presentation of the preliminary results of the HSE University Institute of Education expedition ‘The Ecosystem of Educational Innovations in the Perm Region’. The expedition was carried out on April 10–22 by 24 researchers and students from HSE University’s campuses in Moscow and Perm. They conducted 150 interviews in nine settlements: Berezniki, Kudymkar, Kungur, Lysva, Perm, Polazna, Solikamsk, Chaykovsky, and Chusovoy.
‘The expedition in the Perm region was a unique experience for us. Our main discovery was the range of educational projects and practices from local innovators. We analysed various trajectories and interconnections that allow the creators of innovative ideas to scale their projects up and we uncovered their sources and drivers,’ explains Darya Tomasova, head of the expedition and Research Fellow of the HSE University Laboratory for Educational Innovation Research.
The opening of applications for KIVO 2022 will be announced in the near future. Visit the competition website for more information and updates.