iRead in Schools: Introducing Doukas School

Introducing Doukas School

Doukas School, a K-12 educational institution with a 100 year history, offers to its 2000 student body one of the most innovative educational and athletic programs in Greece. Doukas School participates in several EU and National R&D Projects (e.g. Erasmus+, Lifelong Learning Programme, Horizon 2020) and has coordinated extensive European Networks (School on the Cloud). The first “Classroom of the Future” in Greece was created in 2007 based on the R&D Project bearing the same name. Students from K4-K10 are currently using tablets that contain all the required educational material and which are connected wirelessly to the interactive whiteboard in their classroom and the Internet. As part of our research target we have integrated “knowledge, skills and attitudes” in our learning environments as a combination of key competences and literacies, enhancing language, mathematical and digital competences, in full accordance with our key areas of interest (School of the Future, Personalised Learning, Project-Based Learning, Game-Based Learning, and Cloud Computing).

Doukas Staff 

Yannis Kotsanis holds a PhD in Computer Engineering and Educational Technology from the National Technical University of Athens. Currently he is Head of Research – Innovation & Quality Departments at Doukas School. His main research interests pertain to innovative and competency-based education, with an emphasis in language communication, logic and digital literacies, gamification, educational applications, and adult training. He joined the iRead community combining his initial academic research in Computational Linguistics with his experience as a researcher and project manager in more than 50 R&D national and European projects. Further info and related papers can be found in www.kotsanis.gr.

Olympia Kortsari holds a diploma in Primary Education from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a Masters of Education in Language, Literature and Theatre in Education from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and a Masters of Arts in Literature from Tufts University in Boston. She is currently completing her PhD in Children’s Literature with a research interest in the didactic of Language and Literature. Since 2004, she has been working as a primary school teacher at Doukas School. She has participated in numerous conferences, has published a book and academic texts in collective volumes. She is a tutor in Seminars on Literature and has participated in research projects (e.g. IDPBC).

Thomas Economou is currently conducting his studies in the field of Digital Systems with a focus on Technology Education and e-services (collaborative learning environments, knowledge management, educational psychology, etc.) at the University of Piraeus. He has been a member of the Doukas School R&D Department since 2014 and has been involved with the Project Management and Financial Management of more than 20 educational and training related programmes under Erasmus+, LLP, Horizon 2020 as well as several national projects. During this period, he has also been a member of Doukas School team in several literacy related projects such as Boys Reading, IDPBC, LiRe 2.0 and COMMIX.

 Why we got involved with iRead?

Our contribution builds on previous research conducted by Doukas School in the course of our participation in several literacy related projects. Examples are Boys Reading, making reading an integral part in the life of boys aged 11-15, LiRe 2.0, promoting reading communities through the use of Web 2.0 technologies, IDPBC identifying picture book collections to address diversity, and COMMIX empowering literacy in adolescents through creative engagement with comics. The main objectives of these projects include authoring, publishing and presenting a handbook on reading promotion through ICT, designing, delivering and evaluating training modules for reading promoters, piloting, implementing and evaluating ICT-based reading promotion programmes and identifying existing best practices and methods for supporting teenagers to read. During the iRead Project implementation, Doukas School key priority is the coordination of a network of 25 Greek schools with 30 teachers and reaching 750 students, which will be conducted with the use of project outcomes to 200 tablets.