I was named Eleni, after my father's mother but my friends call me Lenio. I was born in Athens, I am an only child and grew up playing the role of the teacher,with my dolls and my father's books being my "students" ..... At the age of eleven I fell in love with Shakespeare and decided that I wanted to study english. At the age of 17 I registered to the Academy for primary school teachers in Mytilene ( an island on the North East Aegean Sea). I studied there for two years . After getting my degree as a primary school teacher, teaching Greek, and not managing to enter the Faculty of English Language and Literature in Athens, I moved to Thessaloniki to pursue my dream. In the Department of English Language and Literature in Thessaloniki except from attending lectures I became a member of a theatrical group named "Bald Theater" . We staged a dozen at least plays both greek and english, we traveled to the Bienale of youth in Torino,Italy and Valencia,Spain . I dare say those were the wild but best years of my life .
I loved the city, the people , the sea and also met my husband Alexander who is a journalist, got married and had two sons Constantinos who is now 20 and studies mathematics at the University of Ioannina and Christos who is 16 and goes to high school . By the time my elder one was born I had been teaching english at a private school of language. For the past 17 years I have been teaching greek to public schools starting from Crete and the last years at schools near my house.
At school the students are from 6 to 12 years old but I teach the 5th and 6th grade that means my students are 10-12 year olds. I consider it a very interesting age, they are small enough to express their love to the teacher and consider him/her to be someone they trust and share their everyday life away from school. Everyday I get bombarded with their news from the previous afternoon. Sometimes it can be difficult since we have a lot of pupils from foreign countries, Albania or Georgia and they do not speak greek, so that is why I chose to attend this session in EVO. Our classes are mixed and we try to keep an equivalence between boys and girls. All schools in Greece start at 8 .15 in the morning. I teach a great variety of subjects, that is for the two first hours I teach greek language, then maths, history, physics, geography, art. The funny thing is that I do not teach english since an english teacher does, but most of the times I find myself helping them with their homework in english or even explaining anything they haven't understood !
For the past 15 years I have been using the computer just to type exercises and the internet just as their source. It was last February after attending seminars and with the guidance of my instructor -who is actually my hero - that I entered this new world of ICT. Now I blog, I twit , I "facebook", I flickr, I search and use web 2.0 tools in order to expand the boundaries of my class. I have given up teaching following the traditional way, now I help my students learn, I make way for them, they present the lesson using any kind of tool they like or are familiar with, even theater and improvisation, I try to help them learn collaboratively and creatively. We have created presentations, blogs, wikis. We have skipped with one of their classmates who could not attend class, we all explore ways to make the process of learning interesting and passionate. I do feel happier in class, less tired and the reward is great. Their eyes are shiny and when they use their mind in inventive ways I am the happiest teacher on earth.
One of the things I have been doing over these past 15 years with my classes was to stage theatrical plays, and besides preparing the set and props I was in charge of the music, so I was familiar with audacity before the EVO podcasting. Generally speaking before presenting web tools to my students I explore them myself and this is one of the most creative parts of teaching with web 2.0 tools as you try to find ways to express yourself and explore your creativity.
It is the first time I participate in EVO and I am thrilled and really excited. Besides learning so much and exploring so many tools and the way they can be implemented in class I was impressed by the way the 3 moderators Evelyn Izquierdo, Miguel Mendoza and Jose Rodriguez planned the podcasting session in every detail and were present any time needed, always kindly suggesting and offering assistance. I most certainly plan to be around ( ! ) and hope to collaborate with them again.
This blog was made for the needs of podcasting EVO 2011 and will be here for a long time at least until Google stops existing!
This is my first "about me" glog
