In our digital society, children widely use new media technologies and ICT tools everywhere diffused, starting at very young age. Although the role of ICT in education is becoming increasingly important and acknowledged as one of the first objectives towards the Digital Competence in the EU2020 strategy, from the point of view of ECEC the use of new media technology in preschool education has not found yet an appropriated, shared and acknowledged pedagogical paradigm and curriculum framework. In this perspective, the “STORIES proposal” aims at developing a set of guidelines / recommendations (pedagogical approach, methodology, spaces, tools, best practises) with related competence framework and training guidelines for teachers to design and foster media literacy activities and practices through digital storytelling strategies in Early Childhood Education (ECEC). The action is foreseen as a contribution to nurturing quality in ECEC for a creative use of digital media, being – within the others benefits – the acquisition of media literacy competences in infancy a pre-requirement for an effective development of the digital competence within the EU2020 strategy and lifelong learning. Given these premises, the STORIES proposal leverages on the pedagogical paradigm of Digital StoryTelling (DST) to elaborate this framework to address the need of media education / literacy in infancy, promoting a participatory action-research that builds upon the DST paradigm in preschool age for the following goals: • Lay the foundation of a curriculum framework and related guidelines for educators in order to implement such methodology for the goal of media literacy, by - Defining a training reference framework for educators; - Designing and implementing a training model and practices for educators; - Designing and implementing experimental activities in different narrative-based educational settings; • Make a scientific assessment of the activities on specific research focuses related to educational outcomes. The proposal target groups are represented by: • Kindergartens teachers (from at least 4 European countries) who will attend the STORIES’s training course on DST in early childhood and who will be involved in the educational experimental activities, supported and supervised by academic researchers.At least of a total 80 teachers will be involved. • Children aged 4/5 years (preschool) that will be involved in innovative educational practices on media literacy and digital storytelling by their trained teachers. At least 1200 children will be involved in experimental activities. The proposal IOs are: IO1 - MANUAL OF BEST PRACTICES OF DST IN ECEC IO2 - SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IO3 - TRAINING REFERENCE FRAMEWORK FOR DST IN ECEC IO4 - ONLINE PLATFORM IO5 - EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTATION IO6 - GUIDELINES ON MEDIA LITERACY THROUGT DST Briefly, the macro-task of the project plan are: 1° year (M1-M12): SoA research, teacher training course, design of educational activities 2° year (M12-M30): Research and experimentation of activities in kindergartens / scientific observation in parallel 3° year (M30-36): Documentation, analysis of practices, development of guidelines In relation to the goals, the STORIES will take advantage of the collaboration of an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers experienced in projects devoted to media in infancy. This way, it will be possible to enlarge the experimental sample to a EU dimension and to compare results in different cultural establishments in view of a best exploitation of the results in the EU roadmap for enhancing quality in ECEC. The desired impact foresees the following: - Enhancing awareness in creative use of digital media and DTS in ECEC - Promoting the innovation in regional/national/EU policies - Enhancing teachers’ skills and competences and reuse of the STORIES training model among ECEC teachers in Europe (local)
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.