The idea of the project was based on a quick assessment of the current situation in primary schools based on CAF model methods. Also the project responds to the needs coming from National and International priorities. According to the DESI country report, Greece does not acquire enough people with the necessary digital skills to be employed in new jobs, whereas the existing number of ICT specialists is very low to support the digital transformation of the country. Furthermore, the education system is one of the intervention thematic areas of the current Greek strategy and action plan on digital skills and EU has published the digital education action plan which includes specific actions to be implemented in schools in the next years. At the same time, the public education system is facing a number of serious challenges. Among them the lack of proper teaching material for new technologies, the necessary infrastructure, lack of teaching guidelines for teachers for the use of digital technologies in classrooms and to develop the skills of the pupils, absence of motivation and change management skills of the teachers, very low and not intensive training of teachers in ICT. The idea behind is to explore new solutions in the public education system and policy-making and to confront current challenges by observing 18 Schools of the country
Needs addressed/ changes achieved: Lack of ICT professionals and gap in digital skills: Increase awareness for more pupils to be interested and engage in ICT orientation, 2. Build a new Digital Skills Curriculum in Primary Education: Teachers and pupils developed skills in areas that a modern curriculum could include a) soft skills and b) digital skills, 3. Working on advanced ICT skills- coding: Concrete improvement of digital skills in coding and project management skills with automation tools: 8 hours of coding training programme for teachers and 16 hours of coding for pupils, as well 7 months of teaching in classrooms with a blended learning approach, 4. Working on soft skills: Improvement of soft skills through practice and on-the-job learning. 5. Learning to use digital technologies working on a project basis: One of the main targets in classrooms is to teach pupils how technology works as a product designer and not a consumer only. Team worked a lot with project management orientation developing skills such as: work with timelines, resource management and concrete deliverables. 6. Build partnerships: Creating system thinking approaches requires partnerships. In the project, a partnership between public and private sector was built to design a training programme for teachers and a second one between central and local government agencies to provide financial resources and secure the viability of the implementation phase. 7. Developing networking, transparency, openness and a collaborative approach: During the implementation phase, all the schools became one big team. In a common workshop on October 2018, pupils were taught about soft and digital skills from teachers of other schools. Furthermore, all the intermediate deliverables, were uploaded on a in a cloud accessible shared folder to all so that schools could exchange experiences and ideas on teaching approaches. Communication between teachers was promoted too. A Facebook group was created for that reason. 8. Synergies between Ministries, local government and schools from all over the country and Regional authorities: With this pilot project Greek Ministries cooperated while local governments, learnt more about the needs of the schools. At the end all involved parts learnt about the way they could jointly achieve change 9. Using digital tools and platforms for the management of project: In all phases digital tools were created and promoted Online cooperation, use of social media, cloud storage etc 10. Promoting best practices/ exchange of experiences and know-how: As the project was designed on a collaborative online platform ,good practices could be shared which finally enhanced more the abilities of some schools 11. Improving the effectiveness of the public sector/ public sector promoting innovation: Applied new solutions to the public system, introducing digital tools and new technologies. Also these schools, are expected to act as catalysts to the schools of their region and facilitate another project next year to more recipients 12. Infrastructure enhancement: schools were supported by local authorities to upgrade their infrastructure