The e-omogeneia project

[Tasos Matos]

Greek Ministry of education with the cooperation of the RESEARCH ACADEMIC

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE (www.cti.gr), launched on March 2003 the e-omogeneia initiative (omogeneia means “Greeks in a foreign country”).

There has been created a web portal (http://www.isocrates.gr/) that connects all participant Greek schools abroad. Registered users can communicate each other through forums and there are many useful data that could be retrieved, like laws, information about the Greek studies abroad etc. A powerful tool (Centra) gives the opportunity for synchronous training for those school’s teachers.

For the moment, there are several schools that get every week, two hours online synchronous training for their teachers through Centra. This training includes mainly integration of the ICT in the curriculum. Results up to now are very encouraging as every participant school and teacher feels that gets high quality training for the ICT in education matters. Besides they say that they are impressed by the high technology tools that are used for the synchronous training.

Tasos Matos

[John Simkin]

There has been created a web portal (http://www.isocrates.gr/) that connects all participant Greek schools abroad. Registered users can communicate each other through forums and there are many useful data that could be retrieved, like laws, information about the Greek studies abroad etc. A powerful tool (Centra) gives the opportunity for synchronous training for those school’s teachers.

For the moment, there are several schools that get every week, two hours online synchronous training for their teachers through Centra. This training includes mainly integration of the ICT in the curriculum. Results up to now are very encouraging as every participant school and teacher feels that gets high quality training for the ICT in education matters. Besides they say that they are impressed by the high technology tools that are used for the synchronous training.

Tasos Matos

This sounds an interesting project. Are you involved in this? Is their any plans to introduce this into mainstream schools in Greece? Or is the system restricted to only a few schools at a time. I have been involved in a couple of online seminars on using computers in the classroom. However, this sounds a more sophisticated idea.

[Tasos Matos]

Yes I am involved in this project as a two schools teacher’s trainer and administrator of those schools forum.

There are many Greeks all over the world especially in Australia, USA, Canada, Germany, etc and the Greek Ministry of Education wants to make them cooperate and communicate via the ICT. Besides the stuff of these schools are mainly teachers who are away from Greece for 5 - 6 years to teach there and therefore they haven’t any kind of training during these years. This fact keeps them away from the current issues of education and the www.isocrates.gr with its forums and the distance learning tools keep them “updated”.

This project is experimental and will run for two years After that if it will be evaluated as positive and effective, I think that Greek government will use all the knowledge and experience in a large scale (there are many Greek schools abroad and others in the interior, located in isolated islands and mountainous villages who need communication and training).

Tasos

[joannak]

In case you are interested there is a website, in Greek, that supports teachers of Greek language that work abroad in universities. It is the first attempt to create and support a learning community.

You can find it in http://www.komvos.edu.gr/fryktories/index.php

It is called Fryktories, like the ancient communication system based on fires. You can find a forum there and articles archives. Lately, the members are trying to create a "Text archive" as they call it so that everyone abroad can organize lessonplans based on that texts.