First time coders in an experimental school in Greece

Publication date: January 31, 2023

By Vasiliki Psaridou, EU Code Week Leading Teacher in Greece and Focus group coordinator 

During the EU CODEWEEK Bootcamp MOOC I organised and led a focus group. 

All participants (6 including myself) were young colleagues who had never heard of European Schoolnet before nor had ever participated in any Code Week activity or coding procedure. All of us were females and everyone (apart from me) had limited experience in teaching (under 4 years).  

Hence, and due to my teaching experience, I was selected to be their mentor throughout the school year and in this project. Can you think of a better start than becoming a member of the coding family? I don’t, that’s why we started from EU Code Week BOOTCAMP. 

The first meeting was held online and apart from the five members of my group, additional four ones – more experienced – asked to join as well. They were not familiar with coding activities, so I introduced them to EU Code Week BOOTCAMP and the Code Week project before they decided to register in the MOOC. 

During the MOOC, the headmaster asked me to set the second meeting at the school theatre in order for all teachers from the school to participate. 

There I presented them once again the platform and the MOOC, answered their questions, and gave them some Code Week goodies which were highly appreciated. 

The last meeting was held face to face and individually, in order to give instructions and share ideas about the last activity. Unfortunately, two of them had COVID-19 and did the activities by themselves (these two failed to achieve a certificate due to some mistakes they made). 

All the group members were thrilled with the quality of the MOOC, they shared (and keep sharing) ideas about coding activities and one of them, in particular, was very enthusiastic that she started an eTwinning project with her 12 years old students entitled “Digital and Nondigital Activities approaches in Learning Programming Concepts”.  

It was more than fair to give her the t-shirt, don’t you think?