Context/background of the project:
-educators and teachers in kindergarten and preliminary schools lack knowledge about contemporary teaching methods - at the same time children are often more digitally literate than their teachers, educators and parents,
-active learning is well accepted and there are good practices, but there is still lack of its implementation on a regular basis. Even successful examples are not intellectually stimulative, have just sporadic IT base and do not combine more curriculum areas of working with children (movement, language, nature, mathematics, music, society),
-teaching and learning about craft occupations and cultural heritage of 3 partner nations is in decline to a degree of extinction,
-language learning in early childhood is recommended from child and developmental psychologists and teachers, but it is not practiced.
These problem sets can be tackled by reaching the following objectives:
-to train and to educate teachers about using contemporary IT teaching methods and integrating them in the teaching process,
-to promote craft occupations, cultural heritage and language learning in kindergartens, pre-school and primary school education,
-to develop an innovative educational didactic tool that would ease the process of teaching for teachers, while also enable contemporary intellectually stimulative and multi-sensory active learning for pupils and children,
-to develop a partnership project model that will deliver cross-sectoral collaboration and better dissemination of results.
Involved staff profiles (cca. 20):
-programmers and code developers,
-teachers and educators of children,
-child & developmental psychologist,
-didactic evaluator,
-project manager and finance/administration expert,
-heads of department, principals of schools and kindergartens, lecturers, workshop leaders, etc.
Target groups:
-children in kindergartens, pre-school education process and primary schools, aged 3-10 years old (cca. 1000),
-children with special needs and fewer opportunities (23),
-teachers and educators in kindergartens and primary schools, who lack skills for using IT didactic tools (cca. 50).
Key outputs (IN CAPITALS) and activities:
(O1) We will develop INNOVATIVE DIDACTIC APPLICATION for pre-school and primary school children in the fields of promotion of languages learning, cultural heritage and craft occupations using various materials. We will be preparing the teaching material, programming code, illustrating and designing, producing audio and video, developing website and testing. Didactic application will be developed in a form of a game to ensure active learning and interest by children. Application will have age-appropriate difficulty levels and will offer support for movement detection, thus including also physical challenges to learning process (e.g. mimicking typical movement of a carpenter).
(O2) We will produce a READER with collected teaching material from teachers along with instructions for teachers of how to use the application.
(O3) We will organize SEMINARS FOR TEACHERS AND EDUCATORS about using contemporary IT tools in teaching process and about upgrading their IT skills.
(O4) We will perform WORKSHOPS FOR CHILDREN, where they will be able to actually meet representatives of craft occupation and cultural heritage fields, and see their typical use of tools, products they made, design their own product (age appropriate), etc.
Expected impacts are:
CHILDREN:
-will get education through channels that for them represent fun, interesting discoveries, and will thus be more efficient,
-will combine mind-related and body-related activities in using game-based application, gaining functional knowledge and physical skills,
-with special needs will be more equally involved in learning process: the application will offer customized settings and will base on playful challenges, so that physical and other possible disadvantages won't be an obstacle.
TEACHERS:
-and educators will collaborate with their international colleagues, which will widen their network, scope, teaching methods and ideas,
-will gain new professional skills and competences for using game-based and IT methods in teaching process.
ALSO:
-joint work on activities will increase cooperation of research, educational and business-related organizations,
-network created by the project could be a platform of potential customers for future software and development of new business models.
Almost all key outputs will be available and maintained after the project ends:
O1: Application / didactic game will be freely available on Internet also after the project formally ends. O2: Reader is by itself sustainable output. It will be available and distributed specifically to teachers and educators, and also on website for any other interested audience. O4: Workshops for children will be executed on a regular basis in teaching processes in kindergarten and schools. Their video recordings will be available on website.
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