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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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Professor Costas Tsolakidis of the University of the Aegean, Greece, on Internet and Radio Teaching
In Greece, the isolation and inaccessibility of many regions located among the country’s mountain ranges and on its islands have resulted in numerous “dwarf schools”: small schools with less than fifty pupils. An unfortunate - but not surprising - concomitant is the very low degree of ICT penetration. As in various other countries, the digital divide in Greece is still heavily correlated to remoteness. With the Radio Internet Teaching project, the team wanted to take remedial action in a way that both fits the needs of students and teachers and is cost-effective - a solution that rural schools can easily access and operate. The basic idea of this work is to introduce technology to make subjects taught in the primary school more interesting. Schools should be able to blend new and old distant learning techniques effectively. ICT practices should be upgraded and alternative educational scenarios developed – without disproportional expenditures. We thus opted for a broadcast programme to be used as a flexible and versatile medium – mainly to help the teachers, not as a distance teaching method. If they want to participate, they can bring a radio into a class and listen to the programme together with their students. Then the teacher can discuss its contents, ask students to do exercises or refer to an Internet site created for this purpose for further study. If for some reason the students miss the broadcast but are still interested in the subject, they can refer to the site and work with help from their teacher. Radio programmes can also be received via Internet using terrestrial or satellite links; the important issue is for it to be used as a team experience. Within this framework, arrangements were made with the local state radio station and a broadcast time slot was made available for broadcasting to the schools. For a period of three weeks, a total of six programmes were broadcasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 12.00 and 13.00, i.e. during school time. The subjects to be taught were Literature and Ethnic Studies. These were supported scientifically by the Department of Education of the University of the Aegean. These subjects were considered appropriate for this venture since they usually involve narration and are attractive to listen to. The broadcasting team designed and developed the educational material and selected music as an appropriate background. The team was able to communicate with the students and teachers using e-mail, telephone, and mobile phone SMS. The response from the schools was highly encouraging, and a number of classes participated. The kids were reported to have enjoyed the venture and to be enthusiastic about it. The whole process proves that new, low-cost and simple techniques can be used successfully to enrich the teaching routine and to create versatile learning and teaching environments. This is of particular importance in rural areas where the upgrading of educational quality is a must.
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Costas Tsolakidis, born in Piraeus, Greece, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Greece’s University of the Aegean. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Electronics from the University of Dundee in Scotland. 
