The project RIDE – Robotics for the Inclusive Development of Atypical and Typical Children aims to struggle against early school leaving primarly in the participating countries, secondary all over Europe. Our target group contains those atypical and typical children aged 8-14, who learn in inclusive groups, and general study and SEN teachers who deal with them. Seven organizations from four European countries – Hungary, Italy, Spain, Romania - will take part in the project for 36 months.. As a strategic partnership, two enterprises, two universities and three schools will work together in a very strong cooperation on the fulfilment of the project goals. As the result of our project, we will create and test a module matrix of 10 modules with 8 variations for each module. The modules will be based on the usage of ArTeC robots, a modular, colourful, extremely variable robotic set. All the variations will focus on different developmental aims in composed from learning and competence skills. All the materials developed during the project will be uploaded to our brand new, searchable website and will be available for all teachers from Europe who want to implement our method. The project also involves the development, testing and accrediting of a teacher training for preparing teachers for the usage of the module matrix. The coordinator is Abacusan Studio, Hungary - a nonprofit enterprise working on the field of formal and nonformal STEM education, focusing on teaching robotics and using robotics in teaching other subjects. The other enterprise is Interonline from Spain, has got a similar profile as Abacusan, developing learning materials for the usage of robots in teaching general subjects. These organisations will be responsible for the product-making approach and for the informatics background of the project. The project will involve two universities: the Faculty of Pedagogy of Special Education of ELTE, Budapest and the Pedagogical Training Faculty of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. They will provide the research background, practice and knowledge for the project. Three schools will work as the test field of the project: one-one from Hungary, Italy and Romania. Besides training teachers and giving and evaluating test lessons, these schools will take part in a blended mobility activity: having virtual mobility connection through the whole project period and a common camp as well. We will disseminate and multiplicate the results of the project on local, regional, country and European level in order to reach more population of the target group and reach our goals.
The children in our target group, suffering from dyslexia, ADHD, high-functioning autism, grapho-motoric and spatial problems would develop in the following fields in a measurable way: text comprehension, computational thinking, graphomotor skills, spatial orientation, attention concentration, social competences. The situation of these students in the class or learning group would change in a positive direction. The competencies that are needed for prosperity in the 21st century (ICT competencies, reliable thinking and life skills, social competencies) of the target group would develop in the schools of the partnership. The number of those SEN children, whose talent in the field of information technology, especially in robotics, is discovered and developed would grow. The number of those teachers, who know the basics of programming and robotics, as well as possibilities of the application of these techniques in their everyday practice would grow in the partner countries. The didactical knowledge of those teachers who teach in inclusive groups would develop in the field of SEN development methods . The number of teachers who use ICT techniques in their everyday practice - especially in the case of SEN students - would grow in the partner countries.
We applied for the project because our partnership aimed to combat early school leaving, primarily in the participating countries, secondarily all over Europe. As we realized, one of the reasons of early school leaving is the lack of methodological knowledge and tools aiding non-SEN-specialized teachers in the field of integrating SEN children effectively. We aimed to provide a methodology and toolset that help the parallel SEN development, talent development and supporting inclusion of these students with full toolsets and supporting materials. We wanted to develop the new methodology based on the practice of some of the partners in using ArTeC robotics and robot-assisted digital storytelling. Our target group consisted those atypical and typical children aged 8-14 who learn in integrated or inclusive groups, and non-SEN-specialized and SEN teachers who deal with them. According to our goals, the more effective integration of atypical children in mainstream education would reduce their early school leaving risks, help their talent management - and as the result of these - help them to reach a better position on the labour market.