Thanasis Tsagatakis Teacher at the school of Zefyri, Greece

Challenge

Our school is the second high school in Zefyri, Greece.
It is a new school that has opened 4 years ago. We are situated in a very difficult region with not too much help for education.
On our 1rst year, we did not have any computers. We sent out mails to families, friends and some companies to try to get old computers.

This year is similar but we managed to buy a few computers but without monitors to save money Since we do not have much support, we have to do a lot by ourselves.
But despite that I am very happy when I see the students enjoying to work on computers. And when they complain about their slowness, I joke with them telling them to bring back their personal computers from home.

Solution

We found out about the e-Learning Awards when surfing on the web last year. We really took it as an exercise, a joke between ourselves. We did not think we could win.
I want to congratulate once again the students who worked on that project. They stayed after school hours, enjoying themselves working on it, without even thinking of complaining.

When we won the 2nd place, it was not only about winning those great products; it was also a boost of self confidence. Out of 366 projects we were second!
The eInstruction products are a great asset for us. To succeed in this contest and win a MOBI and a kit of 32 Crickets is going to open new horizons for us.

Winning the einstruction product at the E-learning awards will make our lives easier.

Benefit and Results

The students who were part of the project team have not seen the Mobi and the Crickets because they left the Gymnasio (lower secondary school) to start Lykeio (upper secondary school). They will come to see them when they are done with their exams.

I already started using the Mobi and the Crickets with another class.

With the Crickets, I love the fact that all students can participate all together, it is the 1st time ever and I really enjoy it.

I haven’t had the time to really go too deep on how to use these products at their full capacity, but the first few uses in class make me decide to organize myself so that next year every class in this school can use them.

The Response systems (the Crickets) are a different way of teaching but very enjoyable. It seems to be more work to prepare the course but then it is great to see students participate all together.
And see students enjoy themselves is what make a teacher happy.

The Mobi allows me to move around in the class and keep helping students while moving around. The Mobi gets me away from the board and I can look at my students while talking.

For now it is too new for the students to use yet, I see it more as a teacher tool for now.

I haven’t had enough time to use the relation between Mobi pad and the response systems but it seems great to be able to see the results of survey while still being among the students and being able to help them, It seems very useful.

The Mobi uses the Workspace software and the Crickets use the Response software.

The great advantage of the einstruction software is that they integrate themselves into the software we are using daily, and can be used with any media regardless of format.

In Workspace, the Multi user mode helps me see how 2 students can work different ways on a same problem.

Conclusion

I have just started to using these tools, so next year it will be much clearer how important the use of such tool are in education.

I want to thank eInstruction because winning products is one thing but knowing that some companies do care for Education is another and gives me courage to keep looking for innovations in teaching.