Keep In Touch. Innovative tools to build digital education readiness in Early Childhood Education. Erasmus Project

Project Title

Keep In Touch. Innovative tools to build digital education readiness in Early Childhood Education.

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Early childhood education and care; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The most relevant priority of this project is the implementation of innovative practices in the digital era promoting new transversal methodologies and pedagogies in Early Childhood Education through training and the production of open source materials, that can support educational staff as well as other stakeholders, including families, supporting learning processes and building digital education readiness in response to the COVID 19 situation. Here for a partnership of 5 partners from different European countries – Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and Portugal –involving 4 media and cultural education institutions, 1 school and 29 associated partners was built to work together for a duration of 2 years.
The current COVID 19 pandemic is having a significant worldwide impact on education and children’s lives, with many parents struggling to balance their responsibilities for childcare and paid employment. The crisis has not only brought to light the digital divide, with at least one third of the worlds school children being unable to access remote learning (Unicef press release, 26th August 2020), but also the need of early education educators to be trained, in order to develop their digital pedagogical competences and enabling them to deliver high quality inclusive digital education. The main aim of Keep In Touch is the promotion of innovative methods and tools for building digital education readiness in Early Childhood Education, through the introduction of innovative approaches to the digital in ECEC, that rework the needs that the COVID crises highlightened, approaching the digital in a critical and creative way and above all using the digital for maintaining emotional bounding and social nearness. The project seeks to develop and implement activities that involve and answer to the needs of the educational comunity as a whole, using creativity and inspiration of pedagogical innovators to respond to very practical and daily matters such as the high opportunities (and risks) of the digital as well as the need of distance learning settings due to the pandemic.
The first objective of the project is therefor the training of early childhood teachers and educators (target group1), with the aim to develop digital pedagogical competences, in methodologies that allow educators to involve parents in learning processes, safeguarding the inclusive nature of the learning opportunities, and to develop modalities that can transfer routines of ECECs everyday life into modalities of virtual presence – so that emotional and social links are maintained also in situations as partial lock-downs and when a child is sick or a family in quarantine. Herefor the project foresees offline as well as online trainings of 170 ECEC educators, with 1 LTTA and 5 National Trainings in the first year of the project, and with the co-design and creation of an E-Learning Course with 5 E-learning modules (IO1). The project aims also to support educators in becoming facilitators of innovative educational paths and media practices that focus on the creative use and understanding of media, with the use of technology and tools that are affordable and accessible to all, with the further objective to create a KIT of digital atelier activities (IO2) to be made with children 3-6 years old (target group 2). The KIT will be an easy, ready to use tool that will present 40 digital ateliers, that will be developed together with 130 educators, and will be experimented at the first half of the second year of project with around 1500 children (aged 3-6 years), with the active involvement of parents, in 5 European countries.
A further objective of the project is the development of “European Guidelines for Media Parenting in the digital age” with the active participation of around 250 parents (taget group 3) in the process and strengthening the collaboration of all actors within ECEC. Here for the project aims to organize participative activities in each country where parents work together on the topics of the project.
The project tries to build up a solid framework of methodology and tools starting from the good practices of the countries participating in the project and will produce 3 Outputs that will be available as open source in the national languages of the project, as well as in English so that any interested person/association/institution in Europe can use it and adapt it to the his/her own educational and national context. All Outputs of the project will be presented at the End of the project in 5 Multiplier Events (1 in each country) to at least 270 educators and other interested Stakeholders. The projects results and outputs will remain available in the homepages of the partners in the 5 European countries and the projects website for a minimum of 5 years after project.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 255232 Eur

Project Coordinator

SOCIETA’ COOPERATIVA SOCIALE ZAFFIRIA & Country: IT

Project Partners

• LA FABULERIE
• SERVICE MEDIA – ANIMATION
• Agrupamento de Escolas de Santo António
• JFF – JUGEND FILM FERNSEHEN E.V.