GREECE - LEFKIMMI

Lefkimmi’ s Middle School is a Public Regional School, with 187 students - whose age rangebetween 12 to 15 years- and 18 teachers. Lefkimmi with a population of aproximately 8000 habitants,is located in the southern part of Corfu aproximately 40km from Corfu town and is the second largesttown on the island. Tourism is its main industry along with agriculture. There are beaches both on theAndriatic and the Ionion sea. In the eastern part of Lefkimmi there is a river canal which runs throughthe town. Our school proudly boasts great experience in environmental projects, as we are fortunateenough to be closely adjacent to areas protected by Natura 2000 Law: 1. Alykes Lefkimmishttps://sites.google.com/site/eeccgr/tautoteta-tou-kpe/e-perioche 2. Korissiwn Lagoon.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJbivKYfPfM. Both areas are an important stop for migratingbirds on their journey from Africa to Europe : flamingos, swans and falcons. Additionally we haveparticipated in local projects that promote educational innovation such as robotics and STEMeducation. In the previous year we also run a STEM and Robotics project on etwinning with greatresults in cooperation with Spain, as well as an environmental STEM project in cooperation with theCenter of Environmental Education located in Lefkimmis, We firmly believe that STEM education: •Allows students to be innovative and transform new ideas into the best inventions • Helps students todevelop or enhance their problem-solving techniques • Helps to bridge the ethnic and gender gapssometimes found in math and science fields • Prepares children for upcoming technologicalinnovations • Engages students and applies concepts in a deeper, more thorough way, leading to agreater understanding of the concepts • Instills creativity • Teaches Teamwork, collaboration, andcommunication • Encourages Risk Taking • Complete Process Learning • Builds Perseverance andDetermination • Fosters a love of learning Additionally Augmented reality and Virtual reality, whileperhaps less familiar in the education space, has proved to be successful in other areas such asmuseums and construction. But the technology used in these environments could easily be translatedto schools and this is our goal. We strive at using STEM Education both with Virtual Reality and orAugmented Reality as well as offline, desktop experiments and robotics so as to explore thepotentials of breakthrough technology on education. In several parts of Europe there are schools thatalready use Virtual reality in education so as to enhance their student knowledge. There areeducational platforms developed for STEM such as LABSTER and LABSTER VR which allowstudents to engage in such projects and which we could use. However there is going to be an extracost for the purchase of required equipment. (eg. VR equipment, up-to-date PCs).