The project aims the testing and implementation of innovative methodologies and practices in the field of education, in secondary schools of 8 European countries: Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Turkey. Here the brochure for download: EN, CZ, FI, GR, IT, LT, PL, PT, TR.

Our main objective is to value media literacy of students, their competences developed out of schools, their engagement in active citizenship and to promote young creativity through the development of “Digital Ateliers”, with the use of participatory approaches based on the methodologies of Alberto Manzi and Bruno Munari and ICT, in order to better include ICT in the school curricula, with focus on digital creativity.

A specific objective is furthermore to integrate extra school competences of the students into the school curricula: in the time spent outside the school students acquire knowledge and competences that often remain out of the school sphere, wasting a big creativity and knowledge potential that could be integrated into educational processes. National and European agendas often concentrate on the dangers of the digital, like cyberbullying, hatespeech or privacy violation. The time dedicated to the experimentation of the creative potential of digital knowledge seems rather short, as well as the guiding of these potentials into public engagement and active citizenship. It is also often the insecurity of the teacher in changing didactical models and leaving his/ her comfort zone that makes a transition of such competences difficult.

A further specific objective of the project is therefore to develop the competences of the teachers through the establishment and promotion of complex didactical situations that challenge teachers and students alike, in line with their individual needs and expectations, and that value media literacy competences on both sides. The role of the teacher should become one of a key element in the transition of school extern solitary consumer relation with digital knowledge into collaborative productive processes. The training of the teacher in innovative methodologies is therefore crucial.

For this reason the project foresees two stages of training. The first stage corresponds to the first year of the project and will be the training of the staff of the partner organizations through a Transnational Training, Teaching and Learning Activity (LTT) and national training seminars of the teachers – it’s essential in order to start the project with a common methodological background. After this, staff and teachers will elaborate a draft for a “Digital Atelier” to be experimented in the classes of the secondary schools (age of students 11-16 years) partners in the project. Staff and teacher representatives will meet again in a second LTT in order to elaborate contents, tools and methodologies valorizing the needs and practical questions of the teachers.

The experimentation period foresees the application of the learned methodologies and the development together with the students of services for the benefit of local communities, through the designing of new public services and imagining new developments of their local communities.

The third year is dedicated to the elaboration of Toolkits in the 8 languages of the project, integrating the experimental phase of every country with the respective teaching/ learning approaches integrating ICT, in order to guarantee at national level the dissemination and use of the produced material.

We will also elaborate a Manual in English with guidelines that are usable and useful at European level, based on the experimentation of the new methodologies performed in and with the schools in the second year, proposing approaches that can be used transnationally by educators in order to better include ICT in the school curricula, with focus on digital creativity and the benefits it can create for society as a whole.

Targets of the project are: partners; teachers participating in the activities (seminar, national trainings, European conference); students (participating at the “digital atelier”); schools of each Partner Country participating at the dissemination events; network of European media educators.