Hosted by , contributed by Kyriaki_Vakkou on 13 December 2022
A school in Cyprus faced a lack of personal mobile devices (e.g., tablets) that did not allow teachers to integrate digital technologies into their lessons. This school had only nine tablets. The problem focused on the fact that the tablet ratio was one for every twelve children and for every three teachers. The problem had been addressed to a large extent with the prospect of even better improvement in the future.
To promote their digital capacity, the school participated in the program Innovative Schools of the Pedagogical Institute of the country, aiming at the diagnosis of its digital needs and the creation of an action plan to promote its priorities. The school through the SELFIE questionnaire confirmed the need for students and teachers to access a larger number of personal devices to integrate technology into their lessons within the school unit. One of the actions that was taken by the school was the organization of a bazaar with old books and toys from children's homes. The students sold these items and the sales proceeds were used to purchase tablets. The parents were informed by the school management about the idea, the goal, and the action plan of the school. Their assistance was requested for the collection and disposal of the items. The result of this successful initiative was the conduct of the bazaar in the school. In addition, parents’ awareness was raised which resulted to the additional donation of a few more devices and money, as well as the organization of additional events (food bazaar, etc).
Together with grants from other programs in which the school participated, the number of tablets in the school doubled (from 9 to 19), giving more children and teachers the opportunity to integrate digital technologies into teaching and learning.
The main impact of these actions was that the increase of the number of devices enabled in a greater extent the teachers and the students to use them for learning. Additional barriers like WIFI access were overcome by utilizing the funds raised by the aforementioned initiatives.
New possibilities for teaching and learning were added, since digital tools for assessment, digital content, programming tools and robotics were accessible to more teachers and students, promoting students, teachers and school digital competence.