Greek school drives learning forward with Microsoft 365

For more than 70 years, Avgoulea-Linardatou, the oldest and largest private school in Athens and West Attica, has been helping primary and secondary school students achieve their potential. With 1,450 enrolled students and 330 staff―160 of which are teachers in the classroom―the school has been embracing technology since the millennium. It was an early adopter of e-learning, among other examples, seen by its authorities as an enabler of differentiated and inclusive education long before the health crisis.

However, not all attempts to take advantage of the full power of IT for pupils and teachers had met leadership expectations in the past. "We have always had a culture of innovation and being forward-looking," explains Stavey Linardatou, Deputy Director at Avgoulea-Linardatou School. "Most recently, that was taking the form of us using multiple open-source and third-party communication and messaging products to help us."

A mixed approach meant that pupils and teachers often ended up more confused. But the school remedied the situation with a strategic commitment to work with a single set of standards and one educational technology partner. Since working with Microsoft, the school improved learner attainment, reduced operational costs, and gained 25 percent more teaching time―every day. 

Greater engagement, enhanced outcomes

"Our journey began seven years ago, when we started to seriously focus on how we could provide our students truly twenty-first-century digital skills and competencies," recalls Linardatou. "Now, we have embraced a wide range of impactful Microsoft solutions that are doing just that―from Office 365 to Minecraft and Flipgrid―with Microsoft Teams being just the latest and perhaps best framework for improving the learning experience here." 

After just two full school years of using Teams, for example, student marks in key subjects―including mathematics―have increased an average of one to two points. What's most intriguing, notes Linardatou, is that the pupils who seemed less engaged previously have recorded the highest improvement. "I think the fact that everything is now in one easy-to-work-with place, with notes and recordings of important lessons always there, just encourages everyone to feel they are better supported as we move to a student-centered digital classroom approach," she says. 

According to the results of an online survey the school conducted following the first stage of the project implementation, 77 percent of pupils feel that Teams has helped them in collaborating more efficiently with classmates, 81 percent prefer working digitally instead of on paper, and over half—54 percent—have set up their own groups on the platform to help one another on assignments. "At the same time, teachers say the use of Microsoft Teams and OneNote Class Notebook gives them back as much as 25 percent of time in the classroom per day, which they can now spend with pupils instead of administration tasks," Linardatou adds.

Building opportunities and resilience 

The transformation unlocked new opportunities for pupils and staff, and bolstered resilience to external disruption. But just as importantly, working with Microsoft helped the school control IT costs. "We previously had a lot of storage and administration overhead. and we were struggling to make our non-Microsoft software work for us," says Linardatou. "All that has disappeared by moving to the School Data Sync service, saving as much as 22 hours of time per month for our head of IT. Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Azure Active Directory have also brought our network costs down from €3,500 [USD4,265] to €0."

Championing digital technology helped the school to weather the storm of the pandemic. "In the past three years, we have been creating all digital learning resources in OneNote. That proved especially useful during the lockdown," says George Linardatos, Manager at Avgoulea-Linardatou School. When a national confinement was announced, the school set up Office 365 accounts for all students and staff, and provided essential training. "Our Microsoft Innovation Trainers prepared how-to videos for ad hoc inquiries by teachers and students," Linardatos says.

Within each digital class created in Teams, the teachers conducted video calls, resolved student questions, and assigned and graded homework. "Pupils used laptops for accessing Office 365 and phones to take screenshots of the exercises and upload them to OneNote Class Notebook," recalls Konstantina Drakopoulou, Mathematician and Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert and Trainer at Avgoulea-Linardatou. "The digital notebook allows us to import educational materials, such as PowerPoint, Forms, or images from screenshots, brochures, and textbooks," she adds.

Using Forms, students took online quizzes and received feedback on their progress. Stream allowed teachers to record every lesson and distribute it to those who missed the online class. In addition, the Insights feature provided teachers with at-a-glance data into each student's attendance, engagement, and headway. “This was especially helpful for teachers to keep tabs on their students and monitor their progress and well-being throughout a particularly sensitive time,” notes Linardatos.

Differentiated teaching with a whole new dimension

Adoption was swift, and soon at Avgoulea-Linardatou School, a typical day of all-distance instruction using Teams involved 27,828 channel messages, 1,523 video calls, and 510 meetings. The school embraced the remote model without disrupting the pace of the curriculum. "Our children didn't stop for a minute to follow their normal schedule," says Drakopoulou.

"It is very clear that Microsoft Teams helped boost student performance,” observes Linardatou. “Plus, teachers have stopped spending time on non-teaching tasks, so they can now fully focus on creating their lesson plans and interacting with their students."

Moreover, the transition provided an impulse to enrich the school's vision. "Our classrooms no longer end at their physical walls. Our students' learning experience has gained a fourth dimension: Anytime online!" says Linardatou. "This use of technology will not disappear when the pandemic comes to an end," she concludes.