The Open Discovery Academy Summer School 2016 was organized by Ellinogermaniki Agogi, in Mati, Greece, from July 3rd to July 8th 2016. The aim was to support school innovation and to train participants to act as successful change agents in their schools and to promote the development of their schools into open learning communities, and thus improve the quality of all aspects of schooling.

To this direction, this year the Summer school approached school innovation and development through the following key-aspects:

1) Games as a catalyst for school innovation

2) Educational design, with particular reference to Universal Design for Learning Principles

3) Opening the school to the community

Participants were trained on how to promote innovation in their school by:

• using the school innovation tool-kit, that has been developed by the Open Discovery Space project and is being used by more than 2000 schools across Europe.
• strengthening their organisational and administrative skills, as defined by the UNESCO ICT competence framework to level KC.5, i.e. being able to play a leadership role in training, providing follow-up support to colleagues and in creating and implementing a vision of their school as a community based on innovation and continuous learning enriched by ICT.
• introducing new ways of producing, accessing and using educational content,
• familiarising themselves with game-based learning tools and approaches,
• developing competences for fostering inclusive learning,
• fostering sharing and collaboration,
• designing their educational activities in order to meet the needs of all their students
• systematically acting as a change leader in their school as a developing community.

Throughout the course they were encouraged and guided to monitor and evaluate the current context, the prevailing culture and attitudes in their school towards change and innovation, as well as to identify the real needs and identify priorities. Following a participatory process, they then collaborated with their group in order to design an innovation plan for their school that will address those needs, as well as methods to evaluate the impact of their innovation strategy in a specific time-frame.

The course included presentations of actual experiences, lectures, interviews, group-work, observations and hands-on activities aimed to stimulate participants to think out of the box.

You can read the full report on the Open Discovery Academy Summer School 2016, HERE