Greek School Network (a platform of eLearning and telematic services for the Greek educational community embedded in GSN)

Greece , 2003 to 2008

Compendium: Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

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Background

The Greek School Network (GSN) connects schools, teachers, students, administrative staff and libraries across Greece. The GSN network is currently being massively upgraded to broadband. GSN provides ICT-related services to teachers and partly to students, such as e-mail, mailing lists, caching, proxy, web access, web filtering, webpage generator, web hosting for schools’ and teachers’ sites, discussion forums, 2 network portals — for teachers (www.sch.gr) and for students (http://students.sch.gr), personal calendar, newsgroups, chat, helpdesk, network statistics, web file folders — virtual drives, electronic cards, monthly official e-magazine (http://e-emphasis.sch.gr ), etc.
 
The GSN has recently incorporated the following cutting-edge services: remote management of the school PC labs, activation of the IPv6 protocol, QoS service (guaranteed quality of services), digital signatures (PKI/CA), application hosting services (ASP).

Moreover, the GSN provides real-time broadcasting of events, a portal for providing various educational open software, video on demand, asynchronous tele-education — eLearning platform, electronic class administration, synchronous tele-education.

The motivation of the initiative
 
There was a need to initiate official support for the educational community in the teaching/learning process by offering advanced telematic/e-learning services.
 
Participants
 
The following institutions participate in implementing and operating the GSN: Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Research Academic Computer Technology Institute (RACTI), Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (ICCS/NTUA), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Democritus University of Thrace, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Aegean University, University of Thessaly, University of Ioannina, University of Crete, University of Macedonia, Technological Education Institute of Athens, Technological Education Institute of Thessaloniki, Internet Service Provider: Greek Research and Technology Network.

Aims and targets

Objectives of the initiative
 
The school network is used by a large number of teachers, students and administrative staff to:
  • communicate with each other by exchanging experiences in using educational software in their everyday work, scientific articles, exercises, pedagogical scenarios;
  • be informed from several websites about the subject they teach;
  • be informed about administrative subjects;
  • download scenarios for educational use of ICT in everyday lessons;
  • use advanced services such as teleconferencing, asynchronous open distance learning and Video on Demand, as advanced means for facilitating the work of Greek teachers.
Target group
 
Teachers, students, administrative staff.
 
Methods applied to reach the objective (technological and/or pedagogical)
 
GSN is a closed educational Intranet — students’ security is a primary issue. Central infrastructure services: Domain Name Service (DNS), Directory Service (LDAP), distributed helpdesk, online statistics, GIS schools’ system).Administration services: users’ administration, network administrators’ documentation, network operation monitoring, network security (CERT), remote administration of school routers. The development of all ICT-based services is being implemented with open source software and is php-based — a significant contribution to the OSS community. The eLearning platform included the philosophy of social constructivist learning pedagogy. Last but not least, GSN users enjoy ongoing support and training concerning the services offered.
Knowledge System for Lifelong Learning