Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its applications are becoming increasingly prevalent in European education systems thus attracting the interest of the European Union and individual governments. However, due to various recent developments, including rapid and intensive changes in digital learning technologies, innovation, disruption, cloud computing, and mobile learning but also unclear policies, and economic constraints, some European countries lack effective pedagogical integration of ICT in education. This paper focuses on the use of ICT in the educational systems and practices in Greece and Spain, aiming to highlight not only the barriers imposed under the pressures of the current economic crisis in both countries, but also the main drivers for funding mechanisms and actors that can influence the future development of ICT in Education. During the past decade, these two South-European countries have been seriously affected by the economic crisis. In both cases, education is primarily supported by public funds and, therefore, cuts imposed by the crisis have impacted directly on the development, infrastructure, training, delivery and quality of education. Hence, although ICT- based education is a priority for both countries, it is questionable whether the investment required for ICT in education to develop in this direction may be realistically secured. What follows is a summary of the main outcomes of research in the integration of ICT in European educational systems carried out under the EU-funded Open Space Discovery project (2012-15), of which the authors of the present paper are members. ODS is an open innovation and collaboration environment for K-12 teachers that facilitates educational content and tools for the creation, co-creation, use, re-use, sharing and retrieval based on OER as well as for networking and further collaborating among K-12 stakeholders (teachers, learners, parents, content and technology providers, and policy makers etc.). In both Greece and Spain, there have been several initiatives with different types of action programmes for the integration of ICT in Education. Educational Institutes in both countries are responsible for the integration in ICT in Education (e.g. CTI & Press- Diophantus in Greece and Educational Technology Institute in Spain). One main difference between the two countries, is that while in Greece the same centralized policy applies to all regions, in Spain, different policies are followed in each of the regions thus responding to their specific educational needs and provision; in this way, Spain, unlike Greece, facilitates continuity and development to be built on previous achievements (as illustrated by Galicia's case, which is discussed in detail in this paper). In principle, all schools in both Greece and Spain have Internet access, but while in Spain about 70% of schools have technical personnel responsible for coordinating ICT technical functions and dealing with related problems, this is not the case in Greece, where for the most part such issues fall under the responsibility of the teacher. We argue that, educational reform is needed in both countries with regard to the content and the methods of the integration of ICT in Education able to meet the relevant challenges, including, for example, sustainability, the need for the adoption of critical/reflective perspectives, ICT and OER integration, and financial allowances. Such reform, however, is seriously undermined by the significant reduction of public funds observed in recent years. With regard to training, both in Spain and Greece teachers are trained at higher education level, during their undergraduate studies and further through in-school programs that are organized as part of CPD. Most teachers receive face-to-face training, while others are trained through e-leaming, and thus through a less blended training process. However, both Spain and Greece need to address problems of inclusivity and to ove
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