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 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.