The COVID-19 challenge has exposed drawbacks in the system of pre-school digital education that resulted in primary school learners' inability to study independently in a technology-mediated environment. This is explained by the fact that, on the one hand, the importance of educational technologies is often overlooked in the pre-school educational establishments and, on the other hand, it is often viewed by the young learners and their parents as a means of entertainment and not as of instruction. DigiChild aims to improve the pre-school teacher education and professional development of in-service teachers in terms of using digital technologies in the educational process. The project will allow preparing a new generation of kindergarten teachers who will use digital educational technologies wisely to turn even the youngest learners into conscious consumers and aware users of modern educational digital opportunities. The profile of participating institutions includes 7 universities and kindergartens from Estonia, Germany, Latvia, and Slovenia. All these universities have big departments that specialize in pre-school education. Having local kindergartens as partners will allow this project to progress smoother. The university partners are Erasmus+ proven partners of the lead partner. These universities engaged progressive kindergartens from their localities to the consortium. This approach will allow broadening the scope of the partnership cooperation at the geographical, horizontal, and vertical levels of the educational institutions involved. The cumulative list of activities includes: - regular management meetings; - know-how trips to share the progress in pre-school digital education and respective kindergarten teacher training; - surveying the target audiences to find out the progress of digital education in the kindergartens and promote it as well as find out gaps and drawbacks that will be eliminated with the project intellectual outputs; - based on the gained knowledge, the partners will develop a course for university students "Development of Digital Competences in Pre-School Education" (3 ECTS). This course will go beyond the use of computers in the classroom and will concentrate on a variety of digital technologies like smart boards and panels, robots, puzzles, teamwork tasks, active learning outdoors with gadgets e.g. reading maps, tracking routes, discovering the natural world with user-friendly applications and gadgets. The smart use of digital interactive technologies, instead of making students more inward-directed, will develop their social and life skills through digital learning opportunities. With this course, the kindergarten teachers will be ready to prepare the youngest learners for the online and blended systems of education of the future; - developing an open-source multilingual MOOC for in-service kindergarten teachers (1 ECTS). The multilingual course itself, as well as its materials, will ensure the use of the project intellectual outputs widely across the EU and beyond; - developing a professional development course for the local in-service teachers (1 ECTS) and launching it at the project partner universities; - hosting 7 dissemination events for 350 participants at all partner universities to share the project results with the wider audience; - writing project report, articles, presenting the project results in the conferences during and beyond the project planned activities; - increasing parents' and general public awareness as to the importance of implementing digital technologies at the pre-school level. DigiChild implementation methodology will include activities ranging from informal meetings and small-scale discussions, experience sharing, design of courses, to dissemination workshops, international seminars, massive survey, and reports. The short-term results include 3 courses for different target audiences (university students, in-service pre-school teachers) delivered in different formats (face-to-face and online) at 4 universities. DigiChild will have a tremendous impact as the chosen field is predominantly terra incognita in the global educational landscape in both how to wisely introduce the youngest learners to work with digital technologies as well as how to prepare the students majoring as kindergarten teachers to deal with the challenges of the future. The project will answer some of the burning questions of today and will produce the age- and socially acceptable directions for the digital education evolution of tomorrow.
Learning about this extra call to face COVID effects, we decided to apply for this grant. We were all united by several facts: 1) we are either universities that train preschool teachers or kindergartens that care for preschool children. 2) we are from countries that have different approaches to learning with and through technologies, but the approaches were usually sporadic and not internationalized 3) EU documents (e.g., Digital Education Plan) and tools (e.g., Selfie) required more publicity among teachers. 4) it was necessary to change the attitude to digital technologies and empower reluctant teachers with knowledge, skills, and attitudes. 5) it was necessary to improve the preschool teacher curriculum and broaden teachers' competencies. 6) it was necessary to survey the attitudes towards digital technologies in early education and advocate their introduction into the learning environment. 7) disseminate our results inside and outside the partner countries to boost the competence of preschool teachers and children. 8) design courses and share them in open-source format. 9) reduce the stress level of children, parents, and teachers. 10) it was necessary to ensure that digital technology is no longer used intuitively but consciously.
Year 2020 changed our lifestyle irreversibly. We were all affected by COVID-19, the global lockdown, working from home, and supporting our children who faced the unprecedented challenge of online learning. This global situation forced many parents to balance between their jobs and helping their children with education. Unfortunately, many parents did not find the balance and left either their jobs or their children struggling with the workload. We understood that primary school children should already be aware of the basics of digital technologies, gadgets, applications, how they are controlled. It means that digital tools and robotics should be introduced in kindergarten to ensure our youngest learners are relatively independent, can adapt to different conditions, and progress successfully. At the same time, we understand that teachers should know and have skills to (1) introduce the technologies into education wisely, (2) help children understand that technology is, first of all, an excellent tool for learning and access to knowledge, (3) assist children to develop healthy relationships with gadgets, (4) prepare the children to the digitally transforming life, and digital citizenship, (5) help them find life-gadget balance.