Alkyoni Baglatzi is the founder of Spotlight on Innovation (Spotin) (spotin.org), a non profit organization based in Greece focusing on the development of innovative learning activities in various field of actions. Location and geospatial information play a pivotal role in all activities of Spotin whose main focus is on bringing together ideas, methods and people from different disciplines serving as a meeting point.

The Mapcompetition project entitled “Refugee Paths: Mapping Refugee Stories 100 Years After 1922” (mapcompetition.gr/, in Greek) was addressed to students of primary and high schools in Greece, who, under the guidance of their teachers (mainly from social sciences), traced archival material, personal stories and testimonies of refugees of 1922 in their family and broader environment. Through the use of a geo storytelling software, they then recorded and narrated the course of each narrative on digital maps (Storymaps), thus composing the timeline of each path in the digital environment. The role of the educators was very important throughout this process given that they were at the same time trainees (on geo concepts, spatial thinking, geo-storytelling software etc) and trainers (training their students on the use of the relevant new technologies).

More information about The Mapcompetition can be found under spotin.org/map-competition/. Spotin’s goal is to organize Mapcompetitions every year on a different topic but with the same interdisciplinary approach, with emphasis on location and spatial information.

Alkyoni Baglatzi received her Diploma in Rural and Surveying Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 2010 and her MS in Geoinformatics from the Institute of Geoinfomratics, University of Muenster, Germany in 2012. For the past 10 years, she has worked as a Project Manager and Consultant on Geospatial Information in Academia, as well as the Private and Public and has been involved in several EU funded projects under different funding schemes (FP7, Erasmus +, LIFE, H2020 ). She has also worked for the Land Policy and Geospatial section of The World Bank and as Advisor for the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy, Greece.