More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, sparking a crisis, as countries struggled to cope with the influx. Just to mention one country, Sweden, in 2015, received asylum applications in the ratio of 1,667 per 100,000 in proportion to its population (BBC news/world-europe-3413).How to deal with not only migrants’ immediate primary needs, but with integration into Europe schooling and labour market? How to guarantee dignity and respect for mutual cultures? MultiLib answers by taking into account the importance of children’s education, since they herald future Europe. Primary school teachers who play a front-line role in education, need to acquire a broader repertoire of teaching strategy to tackle the challenge of teaching increasingly multiethnic and multilingual classes.The project provides primary school teachers with high quality innovative didactic tools to equip for this task: a Library which is a unique OER with 24 multulingual e-books in 6 language versions, plus 12 e-books in original languages of immigrants in Europe (translated in 6 languages). A total of 156 e-books beautifully illustrated by picture book artists and accompanied by a Set of book-based Activities for Children and a Teacher Guide. Through the use of the resources, teachers enable primary school children, both from local and migrant background, to: • develop a sense of social inclusion• enhance intercultural understanding • make children from ethnic minorities, and particularly from newly arrived migrant families, proud to share their culture and language, and pleased to learn about others• acquire skills that will contribute to their future employment in a labour market increasingly requiring multicultural knowledge, mobility (therefore language skills) and ICT competences • enjoy collaborative educational activities with creativity and fun while enhancing love of reading, literacy, language and artistic skills.Different types of partner organizations ensure that the project is implemented effectively and professionally. The consortium includes: primary school from Sweden, foundation with European network of primary schools from Belgium, language school from Czech Republic, art and education provider from the UK and universities from Greece and Turkey. All partners work with local primary schools and with group of immigrants.All products will be embedded into the partner institutions didactic offerings as they respond to direct needs of the organizations involved but not less importantly they will be OER mainstreamed through networks of multipliers across Europe and beyond.The uniqueness of the resources and the fact that they are OER with free download from the project website, plus a detailed, effective and innovative dissemination plan, guarantees a strong level of project sustainability.The project ends with an International Conference on MultiLib and topics such as inclusiveness and multicultural approaches. This will be a major event featuring leaders in education and streamed on the project website.
MultiLib supports primary school teachers to tackle the challenge of teaching increasingly in multiethnic and multilingual classes. The project has provided innovative didactic tools that contribute to equip them for the task. The project completed: Output 1 “MultiLib e-Library” Output 2 “MultiLib Children's Activity Set” Output 3 “MultiLib Teacher Guide” Output 4 “6 MultiLib Case Studies” Output 5 “Replicability Templates and Rules of participation” Output 6 “MultiLib Repository (OER) and web 2.0 communication website” MultiLib Teacher Workshop in Sweden (E1), in the United Kingdom (E2), in Belgium (E3), in Czech Republic (E4), in Greece (E5) and in Turkey (E6), in March 2018. MultiLib International Conference was held in Belgium, in April 2018. The project activities have been focusing on the design and delivery of the above, but also on piloting the resources, evaluating the outputs and the project processes, and disseminating both project concepts and outputs. Five partnership meetings have been organized during the project life and they have been pivotal in organizing work, tasks, deadlines and exchange of expertise. They have also been essential to create team spirit and ownership of the project. Geographical distance among the partners has been overcome. The partners managed to work closely, with a creative sharing of information, reflections, choices and common productive results. Each partner delivered contemporary and traditional children’s stories of their own country’s culture and from the culture of the country of migrant groups they worked with during the project. They delivered attractive illustrations created by appointed artists and designed effective and engaging childrens’ book-based activities to exploit the books and serve as a springboard for more creativity by teachers across Europe. The partners, led by the technical partner, the Technical University of Crete, Greece, have made the resources available as OERs on Coursevo platform and have activated the MultiLib community of practice. Piloting in six school; in Sweden, UK, Czech Republic, Turkey, Belgium and Greece, were implemented. About the project activities that were supported by the grant for Project Management and Implementation, in particular, the partners have performed dynamic monitoring and evaluation (outcomes and project phases) through proper tools and plans. The kick-off meeting was held in Viksjöfors, Sweden. The project coordinator provided a clear time frame for each activity and the necessary management tools: project work-programme, Gantt charts and templates; the templates were prepared for internal descriptive and financial reporting by the partners (1 report every 6 months). The coordinator was also in charge for updating the work-programme and the Gantt charts during the project lifetime. The consortium also agreed on management and reporting procedures; the time table and work plan, tasks and responsibilities. The next meetings took place in Crete (GR), Brno (CZ), Adana (TK) and Brussels (BE). At each meeting, the main discussions were about progress of all outputs, project management, time schedule of all activities, financial coordination of the project, preparation of all documents and reports, dissemination and multiplier events of the project. The final conference was held in Brussels (BE) at the European Economic Social Committee, EESC. The project outputs were presented by representatives of the consortium as key note speaker and the MultiLib library was exhibited in the lobby of the institution. Besides regular meetings in person, project management issues were regularly discussed via Skype meetings. As the main platform, BaseCamp was chosen and all project documentation and outputs were stored there during the time of the project realisation, as well as the minutes from each meeting and the list of tasks to be done. The tasks were assigned in agreement with the partners and according to their specific competences. In accordance with the tasks undertaken by each organization, the budget was allocated in such a way to keep a balanced budget across the partnership. The allocated staff days were sufficient for the achievement of a high quality of the outputs. The development of the outputs was structured into several phases (e.g. development, testing, evaluation of testing, adaptation after testing, translation). Staff days were planned accordingly to these phases and helped to follow a smooth realisation of the project. http://multilibproject.eu/ - here online library is for downloading http://multilib.coursevo.com/ http://artinedviksjofors.se/multilib/ We will enlarge our library with new partner in Finland. In upstarting project MUSILIB also music will be added to books. The library is produced for future expansion