We came to the current project after considering the dynamics and unpredictability of the contemporary context, how the project's partner institutions adapted to online learning, and the difficulties they encountered during the epidemic. Given the current challenges of distance and digital teaching and learning, the project aims to strengthen the profiles of educators, empower and equip them with digital and pedagogical skills, as well as provide them with essential and logically structured open educational resources (OER), necessary for the developmental needs of preschool children. The project supports educators as they successfully adopt cutting-edge teaching strategies that are pertinent to the digital transformation of school culture.
To cope with the sudden change brought about by the closure of schools and kindergartens during the Covid pandemic, teachers formed support communities and sought help to deal with the abrupt change to online learning. Teachers had to adapt to online teaching and keep students' interest and the relevance of their classes to the new context. This is how the idea of this project was born, from the need to provide much-needed support to other kindergarten teachers. The project’s idea is even more relevant as it is based on EuroEd primary school’s institutional approach to Covid preschool education. The PreEdTech project aims to fulfil such teaching and parental needs and fill the gaps in teacher knowledge regarding online teaching methods and tools. The needs identified arised from the challenges the kindergarten teachers were facing when teaching at a distance: lack of training in designing attractive and interactive activities to stimulate the interest of all the children; technical difficulties; lack of educational content/digital resources; lack of time allocated for understanding and using educational-digital tools and resources; common assumption that using technology and the internet when very young is inappropriate.