ABOUT ODYSSEAS

Project ODYSSEAS (Integrated Network of School and Educational Regeneration in Achaia, Thrace and the Aegean) started in the end of 1996, in the bounds of the broader targets of the Greek Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs (YPEPTH), aiming at introducing Informatics in schools. The Research University Institute - Computer Technology Institute (CTI) is the main partner in the implementation of the project. The Hellenic Pedagogical Institute (HPI) and the Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP, departments of Xanthi and Athens) are cooperative sponsors of the implementation of the project, while YPEPTH supervises its whole progress. The duration of the project is expected to be 36 months and its total funding comes up to 2,9 million ECUs.

Project ODYSSEAS is the succession of similar efforts in the recent past (networks “Akritikos Tilemahos” and “Pilot Network of Schools in Achaia”) and owes to utilize the conclusions (both positive and negative ones) drawn from the development and operation of these networks.

The goal of this project is, generally speaking, the design, development and pilot operation of an integrated network of schools composed of approximately 60 school laboratories, which will be probably used by more school units, in the areas of Achaia, Thrace and a part of the Aegean islands with the incorporation and utilisation of network technologies (Local Area Networks and Internet) in order to support teaching, upgrade the cultural level of pupils and support various administrative needs of the educational community.

More specifically, the following activities are expected:

1. Infrastructure Creation. About 60 school laboratories will be supplied with modern computer and network equipment. An especially designed network architecture will ensure the needed credibility with the minimum possible functional cost. The schools will get connected with each other and will have access to international network services and Internet.
2. Training of the teachers and implementation in schools. The teachers will be not only centrally, but also inside the schools, trained to the use of the new technologies, joining a continuous training program consistent with the basic ideas of educating teachers within the programme E.P.E.A.E.K. of the Greek Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs.
3. Development of network software and services. New tools and software products will be developed and already existing ones will be properly adjusted in order to supply important educatonal aspects of the network, like cooperative work among children in areas faraway from each other. Also, network services will be developed and supported for common use by all schools, like selective access to educational links worldwide and communication between pupils and teachers.
4. Evaluation of the results. The results of each operation stage will be evaluated from a pedagogical, technological and social point of view, feedbacking the tasks of the other stages. External international evaluators will participate in this task.

The nature project is a pilot one from a technological, organizational and educational point of view, for the following reasons:

• Organizationally, it is the necessary transitional step between the elementary network of a few tens workstations (totally about 80 right now at 5 not-connected with each other networks) and the one of the tens of thousands workstations connected in a single network, which are required for the full extension to the whole elementary education (about 40.000 workstations needed).
• Technologically, it is the necessary transitional step to prove the viability at a low functional cost and satisfactory availability of computer networks in a wide range at the school unit level (a whole laboratory and not only a single workstation) and at a territorial level.
• Though there are similar efforts in progress in developed countries (a fact that points out the necessity of the project) the fact remains that the educational goals, but mostly the methods for their achievement, are still internationally under discussion and the available network educational services are at birth.

Project ODYSSEAS will be developed, taking into consideration the following modern, basic pedagogic principles:

• Exploratory learning: the computer network is used as a means of discovery and not as a store to retrieve information. In no case, computers substitute teachers. The teachers and not the program designers will introduce pupils to the new technologies.
• Cooperative learning: The project will be the basic unit of pedagogic exploitation of the system. Cooperative effort, team competition, the catalytic role of the teacher and the initiative role of the pupils and the constructive synthesis of methods and knowledge from different fields are its characteristics. The network adds to all mentioned above, the possibility of communication between groups of pupils (of the same or different schools) or between teachers and the possibility of access to past projects of other groups of the same school, of different schools and to other sources in the Internet. In that way, the network is a means of communication and cooperation in the same school, between schools and internationally.

We must emphasize the special importance of developing network software and services, as necessary preconditions for the substantial pedagogic exploitation of the network and its incorporation in everyday school life. More specifically, the following tasks will be developed:

1) Network study of knowledge objects: as part of the project, analytical scripts of teaching will be designed and the corresponding network software for about 15 studies concerning 3 knowledge objects (for example Geography, Physics, Mathematics, chosen at the first stage of the project) will be developed.

Each study will include: (a) a script processed in a pedagogic way (educational goals, object, interaction), (b) the necessary software accompanied with a user’s manual, (c ) instructions for the pedagogic utilization of the provided material and (d) a detailed evaluation of the above in a laboratorial environment and by putting it in practice in class by teachers and pupils.

The utilization of the network refers to:

• On-line access to material that either exists internationally (in sites that will be properly chosen) or will be produced within the project and will be hosted at the three central nodes of the network (see development and maintenance of network services later on this page). Additionally, information drafted from the network could be drained to analysis tools, like spreadsheets and graphing-tools for carrying out further research.
• Access to material containing information of local interest, which will be created in the bounds of the project in every school from groups of children with the appropriate support tools with which they will be provided for this purpose (see development of an environment of cultural studies later on this page)
• Support of cooperative work between groups of children either locally or at remote schools through specialized software (which has already been designed and is utilized in the bounds of another project).

2) Network software for teaching the Greek language

ILSP will develop educational material (which will be available through the network) relevant to the study of Greek language for Greek children who speak Greek as a mother language and for children who speak little or no Greek because they come from a foreign country. Examples of the second case are the repatriated Pontioi who live mainly in Thrace.

The material developed for teaching Greek as a mother language will explore in greater detail the structural and functional rules of the language. In that way, the pupils will be taught the language with its formalism (rules, exceptions etc.). The material developed for teaching Greek as a foreign language will basically concern the elementary structural and functional phenomena of the language and its vocabulary in order to make pupils capable of participating to everyday activities and understanding the other courses taught at school.

Independently of the form the material will be implemented in, it will be presented through World Wide Web pages and pages of "Tilemahos" (a project of HPI based on Lotus Notes), so there is the possibility to use multimedia, which means embodiment of pictures and sound (limited in size). The material will constitute of three basic parts:

1. Instructive part: the subject to be taught will be presented here. It will be analyzed according to whether it is addressed to Greek children or to children from foreign countries.
2. Practical part: Exercises aiming at a deeper understanding of what pupils were taught at the instructive part will appear here.
3. Answers to exercises: this part is anticipated for the continuation of the operation of the network even after the end of its funding. Then pupils will be able to see the answers of the exercises through the network. However, during the funding of the operation of the network, there will be educational stuff who will receive the answers of the pupils by e-mail, correct them, grade them and answer also by e-mail. This will be more vivid and interesting than if the pupils had to correct the exercises themselves based on the correct answers.

The whole material on the network will be available to be printed so that pupils will be able to do their homework even on paper.

3) Applications of cultural studies

In the bounds of the development of tools to upgrade the cultural level within schools, an environment supporting selective access to information on the Internet and material (a few hundreds of sites all over the world and all proper Greek sites with checked educational information) in subjects like arts (music, painting, dance, theater, cinema), museums and civilizations, environment, institutions, national cultural heritage and recreation (tourist information, sports), that pupils will use in studies wihin their projects.

Additionally, in order to support the environmental studies of pupils and upgrade their cultural level in an organized way, about 10 specific studies will be developed with different objects of cultural content, like environmental pollution, commercial trades, modern means of transportation, prospectives in the use of water resources on earth, appearance of big cities and problems of the way of living, overpopulation explosion, European civilizations and the route towards the European Union and matters of vocational orientation.

These studies will be similar to the corresponding studies of the three knowledge subjects mentioned above, but they will be more oriented towards the use of Internet as a means of retrieving information in order to write reports/surveys. Specialized network software supporting this activity will be designed and developed.

4) Applications of administrative support

The software under development here, which will be supported by an integrated programming of introduction and utilization by the members of the educational community, will focus on the needs of organization, administration and communication of the school unit. The software will operate in the local network of the school and will be connected with the regional headship and through them with the Headships of Studies and Personnel of the second level of Education of YPEPTH. Its design will be a bottom-up approach of the integrated information system of the educational community and, if YPEPTH allows it, it will be an extension of the information system of YPEPTH to the school units.

5) Network services and Internet services

At the main nodes of the network under construction, software providing the following network services will be developed:

• Exchange of multimedia messages between the pupils (multimedia e-mail), through simplified environments and user-interfaces (suitable for the targeted ages). The electronic-mail software will cooperate directly with the study software.
• Electronic bulletin boards and discussions about various subjects of public interest (bulletin boards, discussion lists).
• Thematic electronic libraries for common use by all schools that will be hosted at the main nodes of the network, at CTI (Patras), HPI (Athens) and ILSP (Xanthi). In these libraries educational material will be processed and filed by either the project partners or the schools themselves (children school-works, compositions, issues of local interest, etc.). Such libraries, for example, will contain collections of network links to Greek sites on the Internet (i.e. newspapers, organizations, unions of Greeks living abroad etc.), or to other school networks all over the world where anyone would like to be informed on the educational activities, the way of using computer technology in the educational process, etc.

Pupils can create their own presentations focused on subjects of their interest and make them available for public use. For example, a group of pupils interested in space missions could collect material from various sites on the Internet, process it and write a guided tour on the subject (including probably a translation of texts from a foreign language to Greek). Special motives for pupils and teachers, like awarding a prize to the best presentations, are expected to be offered in the bounds of the project to make pupils and teachers occupy themselves with such activities. Furthermore, the on-line participation in distance seminars, discussions and lectures through image and sound (experimentation and evaluation) will be encouraged and mechanisms filtering the access to undesirable sites on the Internet will be taken into consideration.

CTI has already developed tools for spelling check and syllabication as well as thesaurus of synonyms, antonyms, relevant words and relevant expressions of the Greek language. In the bounds of the development of the environment for the cultural studies and basic network services support, CTI will dispose the tools mentioned above and will shape them properly for the presentation creation and Internet access environment.

Ελληνική Σελίδα

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Page Maintained by odysseasweb@cti.gr Date of Last Update: 15/05/1998