Mina, the video and blog post are great. You do big things. I believe
that you will find the way to continue with your excellent work instead
of current crisis in Greece. Best regards, Dimce.
On 30.06.2013 22:27, Mina Theofilatou wrote:
Hello all
I'm writing to share some news with you... first the good news: we
successfully completed and presented two school projects for the
school year 2012-13. The projects were featured in the Wikimedia
Global blog post
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/02/21/education-program-greece/#more-21982>I
wrote in February. In the post I had mentioned that we would be
holding an outdoor event to engage the locals in our work on Wikimedia
Commons: the event was initially planned for mid-March, but the
weather was so unpredictable this spring that we had to wait until
mid-May to be certain that we would not have to face a storm! Anyway,
here is the video I just uploaded :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWffhaJjAcY (in English). In
addition, I have submitted the video to the European "generations at
school" competition, as it was an intergenerational project both in
the making and presentation.
And now for the bad news: this may be the last project I will be
running in secondary education in Greece: the "Troika"
(IMF-ECB-EU) has demanded that 12.500 people are fired from the public
sector, and the government intends to fire around 8000 school
teachers. They are looking primarily at ICT teachers (such as myself),
as they intend to gradually eliminate ICT from secondary education
curriculum (they have already removed a total of 4 hours per week in
1st and 2nd grade of upper secondary since last year). With no
evaluation, no forward thinking or planning and no consideration for
the quality of work ICT teachers have produced, we may find ourselves
jobless in a matter of days.
The crisis in Greece has led many people to despair: with an
unemployment rate of nearly 30% (60% for the 18-25 age group), social
structures crumbling (schools, hospitals etc. are closing down on a
daily basis) and salaries cut by at least 40%, it's not surprising
that suicide rates have tripled over the last three years. Anyone
interested in an eyewitness account of the situation can read a post I
wrote in English on my blog.
<http://agrypnocoma.blogspot.gr/2013/06/this-was-not-accepted-for-publication.html>
Anyway, sorry to convey sadness... hope you all have a nice summer,
and keep up the great work:)
Best,
Mina (saintfevrier)
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