Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2011 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Interview with
Irene Pateraki,
Greek NSS
What do the thousands of Greek islands mean for
Greek education?
It is well-known that Greece has many
beautiful islands. Ionian islands, Cyclades,
Dodecanese are famous all over the world.
However, the small islands face many difficulties in
school education. There are schools with one or two
students, with not many facilities. Some students
have to travel long distances every day to go to
school as there is no school in their small village. In
some small islands, students have to go to the
nearby island to go to school. Nowadays, things
have gone worse due to the economic crisis.
Ministry of Education decided to merge schools,
something that is really unfair for small villages.
They said that they can‘t appoint teachers and pay
their salaries in schools with few students, so
schools have to be merged in order to have more
students and need fewer teachers. Fortunately,
there are teachers who work really hard, make
wonderful projects even with fewer facilities like
dial-up Internet connection.
Is there a national strategy of ICT in Greek
education?
In Greece, the Ministry of Education has
started a quite big project the last months. A new
portal was created, where all the school books from
primary to upper secondary education have been
uploaded. Also, words like places, names, people
etc. are linked with the Greek Wikipedia. Experts
create interactive digital material to link it with the
books. Me and my colleagues link the words with
Wikipedia and link educational videos from different
sources with different chapters of the books.
You can visit the platform:
http://digitalschool.m [