Virtual Language App Erasmus Project

Project Title

Virtual Language App

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 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The VirtuLApp (Virtual Language App) project group addresses the needs of primary school teachers concerning multilingual education, and supports them to gain more knowledge about and tools for multilingual education, integration of migrant languages and less language separation. VirtuLApp promotes educational innovation and aims at contributing to motivation and self-regulated (collaborative) learning for students in the classroom and provides a toolkit for teachers on how to deal with the multilingual situation in the classroom.

Therefore, VirtuLApp has developed an innovative multididactic approach which teachers can use in the classroom in any situation, by providing knowledge on multilingual didactics, application of that knowledge and tools to use in the classroom. This is done by developing and offering:
• A digital toolkit with:
o Experts’ answers to Frequently Asked Questions, which are teachers’ real questions and concerns they face in practice, about using different languages in their instruction, school environment, students ‘wellbeing or tools.
o Best practices of multilingual approaches across European schools in the Didactical Videos to inspire other teachers to create their own strategies and activities.
o The input and expertise of Experts in the field of multilingualism and multilingual approaches.
• An entertaining Quiz to raise language awareness, knowledge on multilingualism, and languages around the world
• The multilingual, multi-player Augmented Reality game BabelAR for pupils aged 7-12 years, which teachers can use to welcome multilingualism in class, to show pupils the value of the language(s) they possess and to activate their language knowledge.

All these results can be found on the project website (www.virtulapp.eu).

Teachers and schools from around Europe, and even beyond, have found the project to learn more about multilingualism and multilingual didactics. Due to the covid-pandemic, three multiplier events were held online with a high attendance rate. VirtuLApp focusses on primary education and with various needs, such as schools with a (large) number of immigrant pupils who want to improve attitudes towards migrant languages and include these, schools with predominantly national language-speaking children which want to introduce their pupils to minority -and other languages, and schools which want to experiment with less language separation in their language didactics.

The results have been shared and discussed in different ways, such as the project website with all the project outcomes and resources, five multiplier events, two extra webinars, VirtuLApp newsletters and newsflashes, as well as numerous dissemination activities undertaken by all project partners. The MEs were attended (online) by more than four hundred participants in total, which not only raised awareness of the project, its premises and outputs, but also generated valuable input from the target group.

Research with pre-service teachers on the project shows that the VirtuLApp tools (digital toolkit, the quiz and BabelAR) influenced their language awareness, skills and knowledge on multilingual education. VirtuLApp contributed to increasing their knowledge about languages in education and languages in the world. Moreover, VirtuLApp provided them with various tools to implement multilingualism in their teaching practices that cover different aspects of multilingual education, such as the involvement of home languages and parents and support the pre-service teachers in facing challenges in multilingual education. According to pre-service teachers, the game BabelAR increased language awareness and linguistic skills of pupils and increased the teachers’ language awareness and awareness of the benefits of multilingualism. What is more, BabelAR gives multilingual pupils a sense of pride and stimulates collaboration, and the research participants generally agree that the BabelAR game is an effective tool to raise language awareness and openness towards different languages of both pupils and teacher.

In the course of the project, VirtuLApp and BabelAR have been nominated for several awards, which we see as a great recognition of our work. For the Leeuwarder Courant Awards, a Frisian prize for study projects, the research on the application of BabelAR was nominated. Second, for the Belgian Game Awards ‘21, BabelAR was nominated in the category of “best non-entertainment.”Third, VirtuLApp won the second prize of the NUFFIC Europees Talenlabel 2021 (European Language Label) in the Netherlands. Last, in February 22, BabelAR won Gold in the category of Digital Product in the Belgian design awards.

Project Website

https://virtulapp.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 411080 Eur

Project Coordinator

STICHTING FRYSKE AKADEMY & Country: NL

Project Partners

• ATIT BVBA
• LUCA SCHOOL OF ARTS
• THE PROVOST, FELLOWS, FOUNDATION SCHOLARS & THE OTHER MEMBERS OF BOARD OF THE COLLEGE OF THE HOLY & UNDIVIDED TRINITY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH NEAR DUBLIN
• UNIVERSIDAD DEL PAIS VASCO/ EUSKAL HERRIKO UNIBERTSITATEA