Open Digital, Intercultural and Multilingual Educational Tools (ODIMET) Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open Digital, Intercultural and Multilingual Educational Tools (ODIMET)

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; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; Teaching and learning of foreign languages

Project Summary

CONTEXT

European cohesion is currently being challenged by waves of populism and a strong temptation to retract within national borders, as exemplified recently by Brexit. Education is the key to raise future generations of European citizens that are open-minded, curious, tolerant, and feel a sense of responsibility to each other. In post-covid-19 Europe, such global education should be digital so that it is able to benefit schoolchildren and their families, and thus should also embrace digital citizenship as a goal.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide the European teaching community, educators and teachers, with a set of digital tools to facilitate and enrich their experience of intercultural and multi-linguistic exchanges online. Educational material is needed to create opportunities for dialogue based on sharing what young Europeans have in common and what makes them unique.
ODIMET is meant to facilitate such digital dialogue, enhance many children’s soft skills, train teachers to leverage innovative digital tools, and foster multilingualism.

PARTICIPANTS

The ODIMET project targets 7 to 12 year old school pupils, their teachers, their siblings and parents, as well as NGOs active in education. This project will concern two types of audiences. 15 schools, from diverse background in 3 countries will be partners for creating and testing the 4 intellectual outputs we plan to produce. Additionally, the project’s dissemination strategy is designed to benefit virtually all European classrooms willing to engage in online dialogue, including many eTwinning projects.

OBJECTIVES

Through the ODIMET project, we target 3 main pedagogical goals:
1 Raising global citizens: enhancing cultural awareness of diversity at all scales and its positive force, children’s capacity to dialogue, and their collective creativity and civic engagement
2 Raising global learners: increasing social, linguistic, literacy and geographical skills through interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches
3 Raising digital citizens: shaping tomorrow’s ethical online contributors, critical consumers and effective communicators.

We plan to provide the European teaching community with a concrete set of methodological tools to make cultural videos, as well as digital activities available for offline usage, so they can engage their classrooms in a fruitful living-together experience with Europeans peers. We designed inclusive and modular intellectual outputs in order to help realise educational goals for all users, regardless of their readiness or origin.

METHODOLOGY

The ODIMET project is driven by a innovative mixt of methods, both educational and with regards to project management:
1- Design thinking: a creativity centered methodology to run collective and efficient work.
2- Agile method: adapted to the design of educational tools, to set up management and project implementation practices.
3- Co-construction and peer education: participant teachers provide feedback, share their concerns, needs and comments, to ensure the digital courses best meet their challenges, and fit the wide diversity of educational and intercultural contexts.

IMPACTS

Through these methods and intellectual outputs, this programme will have significant impacts not only upon the direct beneficiaries, but also on the wider education sector in Europe. Students that participate in the first roll-out of the curriculum will see increased digital citizenship skills and intercultural understanding.

More broadly, educators across Europe will be able to increase their capacity to teach both digital citizenship and intercultural understanding thanks to the 4 intellectual outputs.

SUSTAINABILITY

This programme is inherently scalable, meaning these positive impacts will be seen increasingly across Europe as resources are disseminated, in tight complementarity with eTwinning (and hopefully integration). Additionally, the ODIMET platform will be maintained by project partners going forward to ensure the sustainability and scaling of this programme.

Finally, the results and resources produced as part of this programme will contribute to the improvement of the digital citizenship and intercultural understanding sector across Europe, while facilitating multilingual communication among European youth. Results from the initial roll-out of the programme will inform not only subsequent iterations of this programme, but also other projects seeking to build these skills among different student populations. Results will also be communicated to policymakers at all levels across Europe to ensure these policymakers are equipped with an understanding of best practice in this space.

Project Website

https://odimet.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 199084 Eur

Project Coordinator

Par Le Monde & Country: FR

Project Partners

• PAEDAGOGISCHE HOCHSCHULE NIEDERÖSTERREICH
• Wemanity Belgium SA