MEET: MEtacognitive Educational Training – Disabilities for Ability Erasmus Project

Project Title

MEET: MEtacognitive Educational Training – Disabilities for Ability

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

MEET aimed to fill the gap existing in approaching early childhood education as far as the transversal approach is concerned. It was urgent to work on transversal approach, since childhood is a target approaching the word with a transversal attitude. The partnership was composed by: SPECCHIO Magico from Italy, a social cooperative focused on children education, AGIFODENT from Spain, an educational centre, CARDET from Cyprus, an NPO working on educational platform and EARLY YEARS, a NPO from Northern Ireland focused on children with disabilities. MEET helps in creating innovative transversal skills to the professionals and to the parents, favouring learning activities and ease school processes. We developed an innovation in the training plan, through the Guideline and a ICT tool, addressed to involved professionals and parents, as strategic player. The E-guidelines- IO1- produced, are addressed to teachers, educators and professionals from the field of education and scholastic system directly involved in working with children in an early childhood and care perspective and in pre school ages. The innovative methodological element was the enhancement of the experience consolidated and validated on teaching people with disabilities for the entire school system.
Our first objective was to strength the first experiences of pre-school children. And we did it working on basic learning enhancing tools for educators and school staff through specific and innovative training and didactic ICT instruments. The IO1 intersects national policies and partner local experience and innovative approach. We also developed a MEET-platform- IO2-, providing a kit that enables teachers, educators, psychologists and parents to implement systematic cognitive and motivational enhancement through a series of games and games designed for children of the last year of their childhood school to prepare them in playful way to learning and, in case of difficulty or disability, suitable for children of early school years, who can use it as a tool for reviewing and consolidation. This alternative, “non-conceptual” program promotes a method to bring children into active computing skills. It stimulates the upgrading and recovery, in the case of older children, of basic skills needed to learn how to calculate.Several arithmetic exercises of different typology are proposed for complexity. The child will learn the strategies of mental calculus by instantly recognizing numerically large numbers, acquire numerical facts and math skills, fundamental to mathematics learning, in a gradual and motivating way, in a truly playful context that motivates and stimulates him to put his knowledge on the field.At the base of several exercises, there is the belief that arithmetical notions belong to an innate predisposition of the human mind for numbers and that the best instrument to learn them is their hands. Hands are the most effective and even the most accurate tool to represent the operational processes of the mind, precisely because of the fineness alignment, the distinction in cinquine and especially the motion of each finger, can be compared to a computer operating with a ‘on-off’ binary code: open-toed fingers closed. In the program, using a line of numbers simulating hands, the child can easily develop computing skills at an ever-increasing level, working intuitively with numbers understood as images. This increases the specific ability to read the quantities immediately, which goes beyond the initial phase of the count. For these features and the simplicity of its structure, the program is suitable for all children who are approaching maths and, especially, those with difficulty.
We shared also best practices at a European Level achieving the development of innovation in ECEC method. Working transnationally offered a shared starting point in the definition and understanding of early learning processes to be replicate in other Countries. The objective of a European model of intervention for ECEC was to test in different EU contexts this new method. Working on interaction and integration concepts increased the value of the project meetings. During them the partners analyzed different children abilities, exploiting every child specificity without trying to standardize their specific competences.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 111724 Eur

Project Coordinator

Specchio Magico Cooperativa Sociale ONLUS & Country: IT

Project Partners

• AGIFODENT – Asociacion Granadina para la informacion, formacion y desarrollo de las nuevas tecnologias
• CENTRE FOR ADVANCEMENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LTD-CARDET
• EARLY YEARS – THE ORGANISATION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN LBG