foSTering early childhOod media liteRacy competencIES Erasmus Project

Project Title

foSTering early childhOod media liteRacy competencIES

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Research and innovation; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

The STORIES project aimed to carry out an action study and a research involving a large number of educators and teachers and preschool children. Drawing on the experience and guidance of researchers and scholars, educators and teachers planned and presented digital storytelling projects to the children involved. The macro-objective of the project was to recognize the educational and didactic aspects that characterize the good practices of digital storytelling in preschool age. Furthermore, there were many micro-objectives: to encourage media literacy, to foster children’s narrative skills and to promote educators and teachers’ skills in using technology for educational purposes.

Four countries (IT, DE, TK, FI) and six partners were involved in the project.
Coopselios (IT) was the project coordinator. It is a cooperative of services to the person and to infancy, leading body in pedagogical innovation.
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (IT). It has experience in national projects about text comprehension / storytelling with preschool children, using visual and audiovisual materials.
Computer Learning (IT). It is a Cooperative society expert in following any organization (especially school institutions) in the process of acquiring and introducing new media technologies and devices according to their everyday life needs and practices.
Jyvaskylan Yliopisto (FI). The research team has both coordinated and participated in many national and international projects dealing with educational technologies.
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (TK). The research group has competence in EU projects; ranging from Educational Sciences (allowing cognitive science observations) and Graphic Design.
Pädagogische Hochschule Karlsruhe (DE). The research group is specialized in language learning in ECEC and media education. The university is involved in projects focusing on the use of DST for foreign language learning (English).

After the study of the reference literature (summarized briefly above), STORIES research group collected and analyzed nineteen practices, fourteen from European contexts and five from non–European contexts. The collected material has been explored in order to gather information about organization of time, organization of space, materials used, technology involved, narrative incipit, strategies to develop the story and adult role in the educative process, social dimension of the activities and main critical points.

Within the STORIES project a competence-oriented training model for digital storytelling (DST) was developed. It is oriented towards national and international educational policies and thus, aims to contribute to the quality and transparency in early childhood education trainings and programmes.

The training model was implemented in all partner countries to qualify the educators and teachers for the DST-projects. A time frame of 20 hours was set in advance. The training model was divided into the following modules: DST pedagogical approach, Technical training, Laboratory project work, Design of educational projects.
Educators and teachers implemented a series of three different digital storytelling projects with their group of children in the 1st cycle of implementation between January and June 2017, covering a time span of approximately five months. Following the 1st cycle, the second series of three more projects was implemented during an approximately six-month-long period from September 2017 to March 2018 in the 2nd cycle; that is, six project sheets altogether were filled in by each school/class/teacher from each participating country all through the STORIES Project’s lifetime.

Analysing the best practices it was found that the DST process supported children’s linguistic, social, and emotional competences and media literacy in many ways. In particular, it was a useful approach for learning negotiation, creativity, taking others into account, and expressing oneself in different ways
In summary, the results of the research activities are that a variety of tools and applications be used in DST activities to provide children with opportunities to develop their media literacy by expressing themselves with different multimodal elements.

With the final Guidelines the research group involved in the project has presented the main elements regarding the 3 years of research, carried in Universities and preschools located in Italy, Turkey. Finland and Germany. This result synthetize on one hand the empirical and theoretical research, on the other the educators and teachers’ training model developed for the project and the main results regarding the study and the analysis of the best practice realized within the schools involved in the project.
This document will foster and sustain other educators and teachers and researchers carrying out new projects related to the development of the media literacy and media education in early childhood education and care contexts.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 406051,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

Coopselios sc & Country: IT

Project Partners

• PAEDAGOGISCHE HOCHSCHULE KARLSRUHE
• JYVASKYLAN YLIOPISTO
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MODENA E REGGIO EMILIA
• COMPUTER LEARNING SOCIETA COOPERATIVA
• MIMAR SINAN FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY