APPeduc project aims at developing critical and creative digital skills for children from 5 to 12 years old through a school-family co-education process, supported by libraries, and an digital and innovative APP adapted to the realities of school and family life. This transnational project brings together three major media education resource centers (Media Animation in Belgium, Zaffiria in Italy, Frequence Ecoles in France) and is in collaboration with a very active Federation of Parents' Associations (UFAPEC, Belgium). The consortium can also count on associated partners such as family centers and library networks. In order to reach their goal, APPeduc partners will develop numerous activities and intellectual outputs that are structured around five main areas : 1. Building of local partnerships: namely the collaboration of at least 5 schools, 100 families and 5 libraries (per country) to prepare the experimentation of the co-education process of APPeduc project. A dynamic and interactive map (O1) will identify the participating structures and groups and will be updated and enriched later during the dissemination phase.. 2. Anchoring media education at the heart of libraries by offering them a training module (online and face-to-face - O2) with the practical implementation of educational activities that integrate the co-educational process in fifteen volunteer libraries (Catalog of 15 Digital Library Education Activities - O3). 3. Development of an interactive, simple and fun digital application (O4) to support digital media co-education between teachers and parents. The articulation of activities will allow the implementation of a continuous educational process between schools and families. Beyond a technological tool, it is therefore an pegogical proposal adapted to current school and family realities. 4. Field experimentation of this APP 'and its digital media education activities in the triple school - family - library context, accompanied by ' focus groups' and questionnaires for the process evaluation. It will be accompanied by shooting and sound captation to testify the educational practices and to create an educational guide (O5) supporting the implementation of the co-education process (guide of good practices, illustrated examples of activities, etc. .) 5. Dissemination and exploitation phase that will support the goal of raising awareness to parents, teachers and librarians about their role as media educators. Various dissemination events at a local, regional or national level bringing together at least 300 people as well as occasional interventions (conference, articles, etc.) will be organized in the educational, and parental sectors as well in library networks and more generally book sector. The expected impacts on the different target groups are: - Improvement of digital skills among pupils / children; - Awareness of the benefits and impact of teacher-parent-librarian co-education process; - Strengthening media literacy skills and renewing teaching methods among participating teachers, their colleagues and the pedagogical community as a whole through planned dissemination; - Strengthening parents' confidence about their role in accompanying their children's digital practices; - Anchoring the challenges of media education in the missions of libraries with a strengthening of their staff’ skills. All the outputs of APPeduc will be integrated in the long term as open ressources tools, for the various target groups. The co-educational process implemented within APPeduc will therefore be appropriable and reproducible by any school interested.
Starting from the observation that digital skills must be acquired from the youngest age but must be more at the heart of the curriculums (at school) and of the school follow-up (at home), the three media education resource centres, Média Animation (Belgium), Fréquence Ecoles (France), Zaffiria (Italy) and the parents' organisation UFAPEC (Belgium), wanted to develop simple and intuitive educational resources for digital media education. And not only that, because beyond providing tools, the MyAppeduc project has also taken the gamble that in order to encourage the development of critical and creative skills around digital media in children aged 5 to 12, it is particularly promising to mobilize the collaboration of three actors in the digital support of children, namely teachers, parents and librarians. MyAppeduc is therefore a set of resources for digital media co-education between schools, families and libraries.
Since its application, MyAppEduc project has been fully in line with the education and training priorities of Europe2020, in particular by wishing to meet the need to develop pedagogies anchored in digital technology and the development of the skills inherent in it. This priority was made all the more crucial by the situations of confinment caused by the Covid19 epidemic during the project. During this period, digital technology not only became a priority tool for distance learning but also one of the few places where sociability and school-family links could be maintained. Beyond the use of technology, digital media literacy became all the more crucial as many teachers and parents found themselves at a loss to support their children's more intensive online practices during periods of confinement. With the aim that educational intermediaries such as teachers and parents, but also librarians, develop the skills to do this, the MyAppEduc project has brought great promise.