Inclusive childhood education supported by multimedia and digital storytelling or INCLUDED Project is a training and action-research project promoted by the European Commission (Erasmus +).

The project aims to develop procedures and collaborative activities in the classroom, for the inclusion of students with difficulties in the Primary School (6-10 years), through Tangible Digital Storytelling tools (T-DST).

The promoters of the project are institutions from three European countries: Spain (European University of Madrid, A LA PAR Foundation), Italy (Comprehensive Institute 3, Modena, Computer Learning, Università degli Studi Di Trento) and Finland (Rovastinkankaan koulu).

Who is it for?

INCLUDED plans the participation of at least 840 children and 60 teachers, between Spain, Italy, and Finland.

  • Primary school teachers who can participate in the INCLUDED training on collaborative practices with Tangible Digital Storytelling (T/DST) and, with expert researchers, in experimental educational activities.
  • Elementary school students (6-10 years) who can participate in inclusive educational practices of Tangible Digital Storytelling (T/DST) supported by their teachers and researchers.

What does INCLUDED offer?

INCLUDED offers teachers and participating schools the possibility to:

  • receive training in collaborative digital storytelling tools,
  • participate in the experimentation phase of the project,
  • access to all project tools for their use and experimentation in the classroom.

INCLUDED Project

In our multicultural and digital society, the educational systems of EU Countries are facing the troublesome challenge to respond to emerging current needs such as: embrace classrooms with students from different cultural/linguistic background, reinforce motivation and the relation between knowledge and life experience, engage vulnerable groups (as migrants, Special Education Needs – SEN, etc.), involve all actors within a shared educational path, exploit the potentials of new media, foster innovative collaborative and peer learning practices.

Based on this complex context, the project “INCLUDED – INclusive ChiLdhood edUcation supporteD by multimEdia and Digital storytelling” aims at developing a set of guidelines and recommendations (pedagogical approach, methodology, spaces, tools, best practices) with related competency framework and training guidelines for teachers to design and foster inclusive activities and practices through tangible Digital Storytelling (T-DST) strategies in Childhood Education (primary school age, 6-10).

The project is conceived as a contribution to nurturing social inclusion as well as opening up education to innovative digital practices to enhance quality in childhood education, being – within the others benefits – the strengthening of teaching profiles and the contrast to ESL and disadvantage within the EU2020 strategy and lifelong learning.

The INCLUDED proposal leverages on the pedagogical paradigm of DST to elaborate this framework to address the needs of inclusion in childhood, promoting a participatory action-research that builds upon the T-DST paradigm at primary school age for the following goals:

  • Lay the foundation of a curriculum framework and related guidelines for educators in order to: – implement such methodology for the goal of media literacy; – defining a training reference framework for educators; – designing and implementing a training model and practices for educators; – designing and implementing experimental activities in different narrative-based educational settings;
  • Make a scientific assessment of the activities on specific research focuses related to educational outcomes.

The proposal Intellectual Outputs (IOs) are:

  1. IO1 – TEACHER TRAINING COURSE
  2. IO2 – EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTATION
  3. IO3 – SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION
  4. IO4 – GUIDELINES ON TANGIBLE DST FOR INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

The macro-task of the project plan are:

  1. 1° year (2019-20): Research, teacher training course, design of educational activities.
  2. 2° year (2020-21): Research and experimentation of activities in school settings / scientific observation in parallel.
  3. 3° year (2021-22): Documentation, analysis of practices, development of guidelines.

In relation to the objectives, the project will take advantage of the collaboration of an interdisciplinary and international school partnership, supervised by a group of researchers experienced in projects devoted to the research and experimentation of innovative digitally supported practices in education, with a special focus on children inclusion/SENs. In this way, it will be possible to enact this action research on a European dimension, to compare the results between different institutions and cultural
backgrounds, in view of a better exploitation of results within the EU roadmap towards the improvement of quality in school services.

The desired impact foresees the following:

  1. Enhancing the capability of schools to handle inclusion, ESL and disadvantage
  2. Promoting innovation in regional/national/EU policies
  3. Enhancing teachers’ skills and competences and reuse of the INCLUDED training model among primary school teachers in Europe.

Partners

Associated Schools

  1. IC Bassa Val di Sole (Trentino, IT)
  2. IC Mezzolombardo (Trentino, IT)
  3. IC Pinè (Trentino, IT)
  4. IC Aldeno-Mattarello (Trentino, IT)
  5. IC Vallelaghi (Trentino, IT)
  6. IC Ladino di Fassa (Trentino, IT)
  7. IC Capponi (Milano, IT)
  8. IC Mariti (Pisa, IT)
  9. CEIP Ramón María del Valle Inclán (Madrid, ES)
  10. Scuola statale italiana di Madrid (Madrid, ES)
  11. CEIP Nuestra Senora de la Fuencisla (Madrid, ES)
  12. Colegio de Santa Catalina de Sena (Madrid, ES)
  13. Eräjärvi school (Orivesi, FI)

Authorities

Other Institutions

INCLUDED – Digital Storytelling for Inclusion