Brave New Words: innovative educational tools for training and teaching people with Special Learning Disorders Erasmus Project

Project Title

Brave New Words: innovative educational tools for training and teaching people with Special Learning Disorders

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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Disabilities – special needs; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

BRAVE NEW WORDS is a project aimed to create innovative learning pathways that increase the quality of the work of educators and staff members dealing with students with Special Learning Disorders (SpLD), using 3D Printing and Augmentative Reality.
The project will be 30 months long and include partners from Poland, Italy, Bulgaria and Spain.

SpLD is a type of Neurodevelopmental Disorder that not allows the ability to learn or use specific academic skills in one or more areas of reading, writing, math, listening comprehension, and expressive language, which are the bases for other academic learning. For this reason, students with SpLD need special and inclusive learning pathways and tools for increasing their opportunities to reach proper learning outcomes. Furthermore, people often realize to have a learning disorder already in Adult age and this make more difficult to reach proper learning outcomes.

The use of 3D printing and AR technology will transform how people with SpLD will learn by offering a multisensory experience to them. For the development of Multisensory methods and methodology, the new technologies (3Dprinting and AR) can be useful tools for developing new inclusive tools.

In particular the 3D Printing is a technology that allow the production of prototypes, considered as anything that is not included in the market, so not possible to buy anywhere.
Through a 3D printing it is possible to produce any kind of tool useful for supporting the development of specific cognitive function, especially for Tactile Teaching Methods. At the same time the augmented reality is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information. This technology can be useful for supporting visual and audio teaching methods.

The hands-on experience with these 2 technologies will inspire students with SpLD to pay attention to details, get more creative and see the physical realization of their work.

On the other side, unfortunately, the adoption of this new technologies in the learning path is often stifled due to 3D printers and AR are considered too much difficult to use, without an educational, learning and training support. However, the situation at the international level is improving as special learning and training paths are being established for the use and application of these technologies.

Our project team is composed by 4 partners from 4 different European countries composed by organizations with different profiles: 3D printing and AR experts (CEIPES and Skillsdivers) close to the academic and business sector, an higher education institution (Collegium Balticum) witch play an important role on the educational market in terms of additional thematic courses for disadvantaged groups and one specialized center that deals with people with SpDL and in particular with dyslexia disorder.

BRAVE NEW WORDS project aims to create innovative learning pathways that will increase the quality of the work of educators and staff members that deal with learners with Special Learning Disorders. To achieve the goals of the project, the consortium has been defined the following intellectual outputs:
IO1: A guideline for teachers and trainers about the use of 3DPrinting and Augmented Reality.
IO2: A set of exercises for using the 3DP and AR with people with SpLD.
IO3: A pilot phase.
IO4: A set of webinar to maximize the impact of the final training version.

Brave New Words project is aimed to match the experience and the skills of new technology and SpLD experts for increasing the quality of the teaching process of students belonging to this target group.
This aim follows the European proposal adopted for a “Council Recommendation” on high quality early childhood education and care systems, which one of the 5 key component is: “training and working conditions of staff in charge of early childhood education and care,”. At the same time this aim is following the European priorities for the education of adults for 2015-2020, especially the following: “improved quality through monitoring the impact of policies and improving the education of adult educators”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 222560 Eur

Project Coordinator

Szczecinska Szkola Wyzsza Collegium Balticum & Country: PL

Project Partners

• PARVI NATIONALEN CENTAR PO DYSLEXIA
• CENTRO INTERNAZIONALE PER LA PROMOZIONE DELL’EDUCAZIONE E LO SVILUPPO ASSOCIAZIONE
• SKILLS DIVERS, SOCIEDAD LIMITADA