good news... and bad - Education

30 Jun 2013

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 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. 

Anyway, sorry to convey sadness... hope you all have a nice summer, and keep up the great
work:)

Best,
Mina (saintfevrier)