Eureka! Institutional Repository

Considering the critical role that Information Systems are playing in organising administrative functions at schools, the aim of this dissertation is to identify teachers’ attitudes and opinions on the Information Systems available, to rate the efficiency of the latter and to trace the necessity of training seminars on IS offered by the Ministry of Education. The present paper makes reference to the most common Administrative Information Systems used in secondary education, namely MySchool, O.P.S.Y.D, Teachers, e-mathiteia, the CTI Diophantus IS and SISYPHOS. A detailed description of the Information Systems used to produce timetables of both teaching and supervision sessions follows. In Greek, there are a) five commercial Information Systems: ASC TIMETABLES, the ANTINOOS IS, TIMETABLES, WROLOGIO PROGRAMMA and UNTIS and b) four non-commercial Information Systems: FET, SMILE-PERAMA, the Samos Directorate of Secondary Education KEPLINET IS and the IRODIS ANTONIADIS IS, created as part of his own dissertation. The list completes with LANTIV TIMETABLER, an IS worth mentioning, although not localizing to Greek. The research mainly focuses on how teachers view the possibility of undertaking the task of producing timetables at their school, their willingness to undertake the aforementioned task, factors that may deter them from undertaking it and whether they have ever attempted to familiarize themselves with such an IS. Part of the questionnaire addresses fellow teachers who have had the experience of using an IS to produce a school timetable. What is examined, apart from which IS to produce timetables they are currently using at their school, is whether teachers tend to resort to trial editions or are given the opportunity to take advantage of the full editions, as well as the importance of an IS officially offered by the Ministry of Education to be used at all schools, as has been the case in Cyprus since 2003.