The practice received Second place in the Best Practice in Bulgarian Local Self-Governments 2016/2017, category II. New management technologies and solutions

Municipal administration - Plovdiv provides assistance to the schools in its territory to introduce modern cloud technologies in the educational process. The G-suite and Microsoft Office 365 platforms are available in Bulgarian and are free of charge for all educational structures. The co-operation consists in organizing and co-financing the training of school teams for the use of platforms. Innovation is even more valuable for modernizing otherwise conservative educational system.

Introduction of the platforms includes: informational meetings, polls among teachers and directors, identification of school teams, identification of the necessary technical solutions, registration and setting up of domains, theoretical and practical trainings, introduction to the educational process and in administrative activities, certification of teachers according to the new educational standard.

Up to now, 80 teachers and directors from 7 schools from the municipality have joined the trainings.

The main benefits for students and their teachers and parents are related to the easy communication between them, to conducting of entertaining virtual lessons, setting the homework in an interesting and accessible way, tracking the results by all interested. Teachers easily and quickly create, review, and evaluate homework and other tasks. Students have access to the apps at classroom and at home, studying is made interesting and fun for them. Parents can track the development of their children online.

In January 2017, Municipal Council of Plovdiv adopted the Municipal Educational Programme 2017-2019. It provides for the subsequent development and extension of the Programme "Digitalization of the Educational Process" and co-financing annually from the municipal budget in the amount of BGN 30,000 for three consecutive years.