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 Ambassadors The HANDSON ambassadors ​
are experts and practitioners that have had an involvement during the HANDSON project that are not part of the initial consortium core team and that can spread the word about the work in HANDSON and make it live after the project ending. Thank you for your great contribution Ambassadors! Lyubka Aleksieva ­ University of Sofia (Bulgaria) Lyubka Aleksieva, PhD, Assistant Professor in Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”, Faculty of Primary and Preschool Education (​
http://www.fnpp.uni­sofia.bg/​
). Coordinator of project “Raising the capacity of academic staff from pedagogical specialties at Sofia University for design, implement and provide quality e­learning distance education”, funded by European Social Fund and European Structural Funds (​
http://edo.e­center.uni­sofia.bg/za­proekta/​
) (2012­2014) Lyubka Aleksieva has successfully completed online course “Designing courses to meet Epprobate quality criteria” and as a result, the online course “ICT in Primary Education” designed by her was certified by the international quality label for elearning courseware – Epprobate (​
http://epprobate.com/index.php/courses/2­uncategorised/44­welcome­to­eppr
obate​
). She is also a designer and teacher in many courses intended for blended learning of future primary teachers (studying in BA or MA programs of Faculty of Primary and Preschool Education) including “ICT in Primary Education” and “Multimedia in Education”. Lyubka Aleksieva was one of the most successful Lead Facilitators in the third edition of the Learning Design Studio for ICT­based Learning Activities MOOC, within the project “Hands­On ICT: Learn, practice, teach creativity and ICT” (​
http://handsonict.eu/project/​
). Under her facilitation, the Bulgarian group has achieved one of the greatest completion rate of the seven language groups. Allison Allen ­ Oustream Consulting (UK) Allison Allen is Director of Outstream Consulting and a Trustee of the Board of Management of Naace; she works with government, business, charities and education organisations. Allison is joint author of several publications including the textbook ‘Introducing Computing: A Guide for Teachers’ (Routledge) and Naace’s Curriculum Framework She taught for many years before joining a large Local Authority as senior ICT Adviser in School Improvement, later becoming a director of the London Grid for Learning and Chair of the pan­London Challenge Teaching and Learning action group. Subsequently Allison joined Becta as the London Regional Manager working with all 33 LAs, the range of schools and developing e­Safety activity as well as facilitating national conferences. Allison led the team that successfully wrote national e­safety guidance for FE & Skills and vulnerable learners. Other published national research includes the MirandaNet/Becta review of the ICT CPD landscape. She engages in consultancy and support for a range of organisations and institutions, from for example, the use of multi­touch tables to support the early acquisition of language, to consulting and facilitating NfER/Futurelab Enquiring Schools ­ researching and demonstrating innovative uses of technology to underpin outcomes for learners. Nataliya Bukhanova ­ University of Alberta (Canada) Nataliya Bukhanova is MD, PhD (The Urals State medical University, Ekaterinburg, Russia) and an independent e­learning specialist. She has 15+ years experience as a teacher of medical school including associate professor position and teaching, creating, and administering graduate and postgraduate courses, both in classroom and on­line, for the pharmacy and medical students, as well as continuous professional development courses for the medical doctors and pharmacists. After moving to Canada in 2007, she participated and coordinated collaborative e­learning projects with Russian and Uzbek medical schools. A founder of the professional society “Professionals in Distance Learning – Profi DO” (Russia). Interested in multiculturalism, arts, and culture. The founder of a Multicultural Artists group (Edmonton, Canada). Contribution to the project: translation of the course’s materials into Russian and content adaptation for the Russian­speaking audience. Patricia Charlton ­ Creative Digital Solutions (UK) Dr. Patricia Charlton, co­founder of Creative Digital Solutions, is a knowledge engineer and a researcher on artificial intelligence, cognitive science, education and technology­enhanced learning. She is the author of several papers on artificial intelligence, education, ubiquitous computing, learning analytics and intelligent context­aware designs. Her research interests are in knowledge by design using innovative methods and models. As well as expert in AI and education, she is a senior consultant in designing resources for teaching and learning for all sectors, evaluating digital learning experiences and designing and executing impact evaluation studies. Patricia, in partnership with education stakeholders, designs, develops and shares innovative and effective teaching and learning experiences. Publications and details: ​
https://creatingtodiscover.wordpress.com Creative Digital Solutions: ​
http://creativedigitalsolutions.org Eleni Chelioti ­ ODS/EA (Greece) Ms Eleni Chelioti graduated from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens (School of Philosophy) and holds an MPhil in Educational Research from the University of Cambridge (Homerton College), where she specialized in applying social research methods and paradigms (qualitative and quantitative) in education. She has professional experience in teacher training design and evaluation focusing on teachers’ and students’ key competences, school innovation, school development and school networking. She has worked as researcher at the Greek Educational Research Centre­ (Ministry of Education) for the project “Assessing the Function and Services of Greek Education (2006­2008­ 3rd Community Support Framework). Since 2009 she worked for the Lambrakis Foundation (​
www.lrf.gr​
) on the Protovoulia Project (​
www.protovoulia.org​
), coordinating the ‘Network for school Innovation’, which provided online teacher and school development training to 215 Greek schools and 700 teachers (2007­2012) along with access and authoring facilities for creating educational resources. In parallel she participated in LLWings “Learning to Learn and Love it” Project (LLP), which supports teachers as the leading actors of bottom­up school innovation, and VISCED (LLP): “A transnational appraisal of virtual school and college provision”. She also worked as researcher for the national project “External evaluation of teacher training programmes for new specialties’ teachers in Primary Schools”. Since July 2012 she has been member of the Ellinogermaniki Agogi R&D team working on the ‘Open Discovery Space Project: A socially­powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of eLearning resources’ (EC ICT Policy Support Programme) being in charge of building communities of practice for schools and teachers across 25 participating countries. Xanthie Chouliara ­ EA (Greece) Having the last 8 years worked in an experimental Primary school in Zakynthos of Greece now Xanthie Chouliara is looking to make a continued significant contribution as Primary School Teacher and European programs’ Coordinator. Experience gained within varied practical and development roles, mainly within European Programs and Literacy Strategies. Believing a mature, constructive and eclectic teaching approach and effective working relationships between staff, students, parents, local society and European or global partners, are crucial to providing a stimulating learning environment that celebrates the achievements of every individual and enables them to reach their full spiritual, academic, social, creative and physical potential and meeting school mandates. She was a facilitator in the 3rd HANDSON MOOC, and also joined the HANDSON Toolkit dissemination event in Athens. Jean­François Colas ­ UOC (France) Jean­François Colas holds a Master of E­learning (Education & ICT) from the UOC (Barcelona, Spain) and a PhD in Biology from Strasbourg University (France). During 20 years he has conducted various research projects in France, USA and Spain. He speaks french, english, spanish and catalan. He was the lead facilitator for the french community in Pilot 3 of the HANDSON MOOC, created a pre­MOOC workshop for training the facilitators of the diverse language communities, and actively contributed to synthesizing the results of the HANDSON project for reporting to the European Commission. Uroš Godnov ­ EMUNI (Slovenia) Uroš Godnov has obtained a doctoral degree at Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana in the field of Information Management. Before he became an academic, he was an architect and programmer of business IT solutions and solutions from the field of BI. His research areas are data models, data quality and business notification with emphasis on data mining. In recent years he specialized in the data science area and started to work with statistical programming language R with focus on text mining (sentiment analysis, LDA). He has also obtained many Microsoft certificates in the RDBMS. Relationship with the HANDSON project: Uroš Godnov worked in collaboration with Jean­François Colas on D5.2 and D5.3 packages. He was mainly responsible for surveys implementation, execution and data analysis, which included extensive data manipulation and also a few data mining models. Davinia Hernández­Leo ­ UPF (Spain) Davinia Hernández­Leo is Associate Professor in the ​
Department of Information and Communications Technologies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (UPF), the coordinator of the Learning Technologies section of the Interactive Technologies Group, Vice­Dean of the UPF ICT­Engineering School and the head of its unit for teaching quality and innovation. She obtained her PhD at University of Valladolid (2007), has been a visiting scholar at the Open University of the Netherlands (2006), Virginia Tech (2012) and the University of Sydney (2015). Davinia's research lies at the intersection of network and computer applications, human­computer interaction and learning sciences, with a special focus on learning design, blended learning, computer­supported collaborative learning (CSCL), interoperability, architectures and devices for learning. She has participated in several founded research projects and has been the technical leader of the METIS Integrated Learning Design Environment (​
ILDE​
). Davinia is also active in engineering education projects. Her research has been published in more than 100 peer­reviewed journal papers, book chapters and conference papers. She is a member of the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions of Learning Technologies and the steering committee of the European Conference on Technology­Enhanced Learning. Diana Laurillard ­ London Knowledge Lab (UK) Diana Laurillard (BSc, PhD) is a Professor of Learning with Digital Technologies at the Department of Culture, Communication and Media of the London Knowledge Lab (​
http://www.ioe.ac.uk/staff/LKLB_28.html​
) Current research is: • developing an interactive learning design tool to support teachers moving to blended learning • working with SEN teachers to investigate the design of software interventions for learners with dyscalculia and low numeracy. For both, the intention is to bridge the gap between teaching and research. Teaching: • MA in Innovation and Change in Higher and Professional Education • MA in Lifelong Learning. Tony Mays ­ SAIDE (South Africa) Tony Mays is a Senior Programme Specialist with the South African Institute for Distance Education (see www.saide.org.za​
). He works/has worked with a number of higher education institutions in the areas of strategic planning, systems review, operational coordination, ODL policy and practice, quality assurance and evaluation, curriculum design, open education resources and the management of teaching practice within South Africa as well as more widely in the sub­Saharan Africa region and internationally. He has published/co­published textbooks for G12 Language and Literature as well as Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies. He has presented papers and published journal articles on ODL policy, practice and costing as well as ODL for teacher education and OER. Tony holds a BAHons (Wales), PGCE (Westminster College, Oxford), BEdHons (Natal), MEd (Unisa) and is currently registered for a DEd in curriculum studies. He is the content specialist for 3 of the 4 ICDE BERTA ODL modules of which the Handson MOOC is related to the 4th on educational technology. Maria Melessanaki ­ EA (Greece) Maria Melessanaki is a teacher and journalist in Heraklion interested in providing equal opportunities and varied teaching experiences for all of her students in differing contexts. Further, she would also love to unite her passion for education, journalism and social media into various relevant educational experiences. She was a facilitator in the 3rd HANDSON MOOC. Yishay Mor ­ Pau Education (Spain) Dr. Yishay Mor is a consultant in educational innovation and technology and the educational design scientist at ​
PAU Education​
, Barcelona. His main areas of expertise are Learning Design, Educational Design Research, and teacher professional development ­ which are combined in his work on Design Inquiry of Learning and the ​
Learning Design Studio​
. Dr. Mor has also explored the new possibilities opened up by social and mobile technologies for learning, and specifically the potential these have in developing contexts. In recent years, Dr. Mor has established himself as an expert on Massive Online Open Open Learning Design Studio MOOC​
, acted as Courses (MOOCs). He led the ​
advisor to several other MOOCs, and guest edited a special issue of eLearning papers on "​
MOOCs and beyond"​
. At ​
PAU Education​
, he designed and led the incubator programme of the ​
Open Education Challenge​
. Dr. Mor has ​
published extensively​
, has participated in multiple EU and UK funded projects, and had founded the STELLAR network of excellence Learning Design Grid theme team. and has conducted scores of learning design workshops for educational practitioners. He is the co­editor of the book "​
Practical Design Patterns for Teaching and Learning with Technology" which offers a ground­breaking approach to bridging the gap between theory and practice in education. He has edited special issues of several journals, including Research in Learning Technology and the British Journal of Educational Technology. He is editor in chief of ​
eLearning Papers​
. Dr. Mor's initial training was as a computer scientist. Having completed his MSc in multi­agent systems, he worked for several years as a senior software engineer, before shifting his path to educational research. His PhD thesis "​
A Design Approach to Research in Technology Enhanced Mathematics Education​
" won the second TELEARC award for PhD excellence. Roumiana Peytcheva ­ eLearn Center, Sofia University (Bulgaria) Prof. Dr. Roumiana Peytcheva­Forsyth is an expert in teacher training, elearning design and implementation, distance education, ICT in education, serious games. She is a Professor at the Faculty of Education; Head of the Department of Didactics and Director of Sofia University distance education centre. Professor Peytcheva­Forsyth is a programme leader of “ICT in education” Master Degree programmes and one year CPD programme on online design and implementation for university staff. Her research interests and publications are in the field of technology­enhanced learning, integration of ICT in all levels of education and training, and quality of elearning. She has been a project manager, coordinator and partner of more than 25 EU and national research and developmental projects over the last 20 years. Ania Rolinska ­ University of Glasgow (UK) An EFL/EAP tutor and a TELT Officer (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Glasgow), and online teacher trainer (Certificate in Online Tutoring, International House World Organisation). A keen advocate of innovation in language education and professional development particularly in higher education. Special areas of interest include learner’s autonomy, online course/activity design, multimodal approaches to writing and opportunities learning technologies offer to stimulate creativity and ‘will to learn’. Relationship with the project: Being a lead facilitator and part of such an innovation­driven community of practice was a stimulating and refreshing experience and I hope to take the ideas further and apply them in new contexts. Krassen Stefanov ­ University of Sofia (Bulgaria) Krassen Stefanov is professor and head of the department of information technologies at the St. Kliment Ohridsky University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria. He holds MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Sofia in Mathematics and Computer Science. He also holds an MSc from the University of Twente, Netherlands in Educational and Training Systems Design. He has a keen interest in learning technologies and for years has participated in several EU funded projects, both in the Lifelong Learning and the Framework programmes, associated with technology­enhanced learning. Prof Stefanov hosted the Handson dissemination event of September 2014 in Sofia, which was co­located with an EU­sponsored Doctoral Conference in Mathematics, Informatics and Education [MIE 2­14] hosted by him. HANDSON & ODS Ambassadors
The following science teachers are ODS ambassadors and through the affiliation between the two projects have participated in teacher trainings where HANDSON processes & outcomes have been demonstrated so as to act as ambassadors of both initiatives. ● Mr. Giannis Michas ­ Coordinator of Regional Science Teachers’ Centre of Evia. ● Mr. Giannis Chiotelis ­ Model Experimental Junior High School of Patras. ● Ms Eleni Paloumpa ­ Coordinator of Regional Science Teachers’ Centre of Sparta. ● Mr. Elias Kalogirou ­ Coordinator of Regional Science Teachers’ Centre of Ilia. ● Ms Melina Pappa, PhD from University of Crete ­ Larisa area, Greece ● Mr. Theodoros Pierratos ­ Coordinator of Regional Science Teachers’ Centre of Evosmos, Thessaloniki. ● Mr Vassilis Garganourakis ­ Coordinator of the 2nd Regional Science Teachers’ Centre of Iraklion, Crete. ● Mr. Stavros Nikou ­ ODS/Scientix ambassador, Stavroupoli, Thessaloniki, Greece ● Mr. Nikolaos Makris ­ Scientix ambassador & SCIENCE CULTURE EDUCATIONAL CENTER "ARISTOTELIO"