The development and implementation of this project emerges from a gap between the digital devices available in our Kindergartens and Primary School classrooms and the lack of a proper teacher training in the pedagogical use of these digital tools on a daily basis. In addition, even though the Educative Authorities insist on the achievement of the digital competence in our students, there is not an official syllabus regarding how and when students should acquire this digital knowledge. Our project is an attempt to provide an efficient answer to this situation, and therefore it will compile a planned, sequenced digital Didactic Guide through which students of different ages will have access to several digital tools specially adapted to their age. One of the main aims of our project will be to improve the teachers' training regarding the use of ICT, so that they can carry out the necessary methodological change in the classroom. This project will also focus on the development of the social competence as the digital activities the students will develop will be aimed at the knowledge of the socio-cultural environment of their countries as part of the EU. Our partnership is composed of five members; Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain. Each participant has been chosen due to their interest in ICT and according to their needs and abilities. The development of these objectives at a European level is crucial in the evolution of this project, as sharing our results with our European partners will create a solid, meaningful and useful network that will allow all students to benefit from the digital learning process that they have been involved in. Acquiring these ICT competences will be crucial for our students to achieve a European citizenship awareness that will allow them to socially interact with their European peers. Regarding the activities, these will be developed using digital tools and they are structured in six general topics: Geographical Location, Green Spaces, Monuments, History, Gastronomy and Folklore. These activities reflect the environmental, social and cultural knowledge that our students are expected to acquire and to communicate to other schools digitally. Each of the six general topics is in turn divided in three levels according to the students age (3 to 5; 6 to 9 and 10 to 12) and their level of competence. Regarding methodology, on the first place, all the members of the project will search the Internet in order to learn about the didactic use of digital tools in the classroom. Secondly, members will team up in groups so they can learn to use the tools previously researched. It will also be the task of these groups to design learning activities for each digital tool, establishing different levels in which to use them. After this, we will establish the common digital tools with the planning for each level depending on the students’ age. Finally, these tools will be integrated experimentally in the classrooms and the students will create their own materials in a cooperative way, sharing their work with that of their European partners’ through the common website that they will build together. It should be stressed that all children related activities will show the students’ own perspective, and will be only monitored by teachers if they need help with the ICT. It should be highlighted that a key part of the methodology will establish an open communication both between students and their peers from different schools and teachers and their colleagues. This communication will be carried out by means of email, skype, meetings, etc. The final product that we will obtain from our partnership will be the creation of a 'Digital Didactic Guide' in which we will compile all those digital tools that have been well considered achieving the objectives proposed. Together with this guide we will also create a website where all our partners can access the activities developed throughout the project. Therefore, the final website will become a tourist children guide that any European child can visit and enjoy, focusing on what our students consider to be the most essential part of the cities they live in. This project will have a beneficial impact in the whole educative community, and it will also have an important impact at the city and regional level, as the results of the project will be shared with the Politic Authorities and will be disseminated through different digital platforms and mass media. The sustainability of this project will be assessed by the methodological change in the participant schools; however, one of the key long term benefits of this project will be that other schools will be able to implement a similar methodology, thereby improving the digital learning and skills of both teachers and students.
One of the concerns of our educational community is to integrate the use of ICT in the curriculum by providing our students with the necessary digital skills in the development of such competence, as there is no official program that guides us on when and how we should do it. For this purpose, this Erasmus Plus project was born within the framework of the EU. The project itself has the ambitious objective of improving the digital, linguistic and social-civic competence of our students. To do this, we created a partnership with schools in four other countries: Ireland, Germany, Portugal and Italy, which provided enriching experiences in these fields. The line of work used is basically based on the use of Web 2.0 tools applied to the acquisition of social and cultural competence. The result has been the elaboration of an exhaustive work program adapted to the different ages, where the use of ICT is gradually incorporated into the student's training. In that way, students can bring it closer to their social reality and, in addition, share it with other European cultural realities, thus obtaining a broader and more diverse vision. CONTEXT / BACKGROUND: Our centre takes several courses working in the line of integrating digital competence in the curriculum of the students and for this purpose we had designed an action plan. Our concern to achieve excellence in quality education encouraged us to seek digital educational experiences in other countries that would complement and energize the creation of this project: - Spain had digital whiteboards in all its classrooms and had developed innovative experiences such as the application of augmented reality for educational purposes. - Portugal used digital whiteboards, computers and tablets with its students, especially focusing on early childhood education (kindergarten). - Italy was developing an innovative project based on the “digitization of the Montessori method”. - Ireland used tablets with its students (especially with students with special educational needs) and integrated the "coding" into their daily work. - Germany educated its students in the responsible use of digital media and in the prevention of cyber-bullying. OBJECTIVES: The proposed and achieved objectives are the following: - To improve the quality of teaching with a methodological change that integrates digital competence in the curriculum. - To develop students' skills in digital, social and linguistic competences, encouraging the integration of students with learning difficulties. - To train teachers and provide them with tools so that they can carry out this task. - To raise awareness and collaborate with the different educational sectors in the shift towards an eminently digital education. NUMBER AND TYPE / PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS: In this project the different members of the educational communities of the schools involved have participated: students, teachers, families and non-teaching staff. With regard to students, it must be said that their age range is between 3 and 12 years, and students with different learning difficulties have been included. The socioeconomic level of the families has been varied, so the project has contemplated the inclusion of the most disadvantaged ones. DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT: We have carried out activities in a sequent way by levels (from 3 to 5 years, from 6 to 9 years and from 10 to 12 years) and we have grouped them into six blocks of content to be developed during the two years of the project: Block 1: Geographic location (January - February 2018). Block 2: Green spaces (March - April 2018). Block 3: Monuments (May - June 2018). Block 4: History (October - November 2018). Block 5: Gastronomy (December 2018 - January 2019). Block 6: Folklore (February - March 2019). Numerous digital activities have been developed from each of these blocks using a wide variety of tools and applications. RESULTS AND IMPACT: The work done can be consulted in one of our most valuable final products, the project website: https://erasmusplanningict.com. We have made a “Didactic Guide” on the use of the 25 digital tools that have been most effective from the didactic point of view and we have analysed and exemplified each one of them. We have also prepared a brief guide with recommendations for the implementation of ICT in schools. With this we have achieved that the students integrate the use of computing resources as an inherent part of their educational process. ICT has become a way to build meaningful learning based on technology, improving its educational quality. The impact has been such that other schools have taken us as a reference for methodological change and adaptation to new technologies.