The Foreign Ministry’s Secretariat General for Greeks abroad is pleased to announce the pilot launch of the Greek language learning platform StaEllinika for pupils, which will take place at select schools of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
This pilot launch will take place at select schools in the U.S., in states such as California, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, under the supervision of Dr. Anastasios Koularmanis, the Director of the Education Department of the Archdiocese of America.
The StaEllinika platform was recently adopted as the official tool of the Secretariat General for Greeks Abroad for teaching the Greek language, Greek mythology and aspects of Greek culture to the Greek diaspora. The beta version of the platform was released at the end of April, to selected pupils and just four weeks later it has over 7,000 registered students from 106 countries. The Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs embraced the effort, ensuring the platform’s full harmonisation with the official policy and strategies of the Greek State.
The series of educational apps is the fruit of the collaboration of the Secretariat General for Greeks Abroad, under Secretary General Ioannis Chrysoulakis, with an interdisciplinary team headed by members of the New Media Lab of the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. Most of the members of the team are talented young people who live in Greece, and the programme enabled them to live and work in their homeland.
The pilot applications will provide additional teaching resources and support for teachers working in an exclusively online environment. The comprehensive programme, which has been developed through the present collaboration, will be fully compatible with the new schooling conditions as shaped by the new public health protocols created in response to Covid-19, preparing our communities for a possible new outbreak of the pandemic in the fall of 2020.
Bearing in mind the results of the current pilot launch, the full release version will be made available in the fall of 2020 to support communities, schools and isolated students throughout the Greek diaspora, thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which is funding the development of the apps by the SNF New Media Lab.
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Diaspora Greeks, Kostas Vlasis, made the following statement: “Recognizing the special conditions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs mounted a great effort to make many of the specific applications of the www.staellinika.com platform available as soon as possible. Today, we are very pleased to deliver the platform for pilot use by the schools of our diaspora in America. The Greek language is a key element uniting global Hellenism, and this platform is a major investment in preserving, passing on and promoting our language.
His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America made the following statement: “Technological solutions such as this will contribute to the effort we are making as the Archdiocese of America to revive Greek letters and pass the Greek language on to younger generations. I am certain that our young friends will love this innovative app, a fun and entertaining tool for learning our beautiful language.
The Deputy Minister of Education and Religious Affairs, Sofia Zacharaki, who is responsible for Primary and Secondary Education, stated: “The ties between Greece and the Greek diaspora have always been very close. These ties have always been supported systematically, inspiring us to constantly explore new ways to strengthen them. The ‘StaEllinnika’ platform is an important initiative, in the midst of the pandemic, that supports the promotion and teaching of the Greek language and our culture in diaspora schools. It is an important milestone for the actions that will be developed in the immediate future to pass on our cultural heritage. We thank the Secretariat General for Greeks Abroad and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for this initiative.”
Dr. Anastasios Koularmanis, Director of the Education Department of the Archdiocese of America, said, “we are excited about this innovative action in support of the Greek schools of the diaspora, especially under the current difficult conditions. Our warm thanks to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and our congratulations to our partners, the Secretariat General for Greeks Abroad and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, on their initiative, and I hope that this cooperation creates new opportunities for expanding such actions in the future.”
The Director of the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University, Dr. Dimitris Krallis, said he was pleased that “thanks to the generosity of the SNF, the product of two years of intensive work by a truly talented team will find its natural audience, the young children of the Greek diaspora. It was an honour for us to collaborate in the context of a truly decentralized work model – which turned out to be perfectly designed for the current emergency conditions – with talented Greeks from Greece and around the world. A somewhat dispersed – one might say diasporic – team was put together and brought their passion, minds and souls to an initiative that is designed to unite diaspora communities through the Greek language.
Source: mfa.gr