Summary of our Project
Putting the highest premium of contemporary education on providing the most efficient standards and innovative approaches, in a time when we face new demands due to a global threat, we focus on two priorities: storytelling and the innovation of our teaching/learning/assessment methods through ICT. The first one is a basic way of sharing and transferring information, the second embeds modern technologies into daily practice.
The aim of our project is to preserve and expand literacy skills, but also to ensure the embodiment of storytelling via modern technologies, hence, we aim at developing digital literacy as well. Both are crucial for education. Digital storytelling combines the art of traditional storytelling with multimedia features. It is a meaningful and advanced way of
telling personal narratives, which also helps a person reach a wider audience.
In our project, digital narratives will go beyond students’ experiences and will be enhanced by school syllabi, through flexible cross-curricular connections. It will develop in different modules, with growing complexity, and built up in a logical sequence upon each other. The goal is to get participants prepared to introduce storytelling into their lessons in a more ground-breaking way through using ICT tools.
Our main topics will make us focus on structure, content, and creativity in digital stories, bringing in European cultural tangible/intangible heritage and natural heritage. ICT for pedagogical purposes (web-tools/software, especially related to multimedia) will be a key feature, so as to prepare students and teachers to plan and use audio - visual narratives. On another stage, this innovative approach will lead us to CLIL: the use of English as a common communication tool, connecting heritage and (in)formal school curricula. Further on, in an advanced stage of the project, we will incorporate formal school curricula, and we will analyse different ways to approach project-based teaching/learning methods – bridging heritage, social studies, STE(A)M and digital storytelling. The last topic to be addressed will lie on digital stories and projects when used as formative evaluation tools. By choosing this content, we will try to answer the questions upon which our objectives were built: Can multimedia be an innovative tool/method of…storytelling? preserving our communities’ heritage? promoting meaningful cross-curricular knowledge? How can we improve the teaching, learning and formative assessment process in our classrooms through ICT?
Students and teachers from different departments will deal with 21st century skills like computer literacy, global awareness, problem solving and language fluency. Due to connections to school curricula, using ICT and web tools will transform our teaching, learning and assessing methods into more effective and attractive processes.
Via activities that will foster autonomy and follow a sequence of complexity, our daily work will merge traditional storytelling with multimedia technology such as photography, text, audio, hypertext, video and numerous film techniques, stills, full-motion video with sound, sketches and more. IT technologies will also be used to modify work, to enrich it, to illustrate the outcomes, to store and disseminate them. All partners will bring the expertise of their experience and practices, each one making their own contribution to a better European education and sense of citizenship. The preferred methodology will integrate project-based approaches, CLIL, discussion, teamwork, presentations, seminars, self-organized learning and an action-research attitude.
Outcomes (digital stories, lesson plans/activities, guidelines for stories...) will be presented to target groups and worldwide via workshops, educational platforms and accessible media, reaching further audience. Expected impact of digital narratives can motivate others to protect their heritage as well as perceive learning in a more meaningful way.
Finally, one should also acknowledge that with Europe having no borders, people should be aware of other cultures and lifestyles. In our activities, students will introduce themselves and their cultures, interact, have deep intergenerational contact, and will learn intercultural competences. Visiting one another’s schools and countries are factors which raise the
quality and dimension of a better European education. Broadening the educational process by cooperating with foreign partners allows us to gain knowledge and experience connected with social, cultural and professional aspects of functioning in the modern society. This creates the scaffold to install values and attitudes reflecting respect, tolerance, sense of contribution and belonging; in the long run, it makes the youth aware and creative citizens of the modern society.
Audio - visual narratives, multimedia artefacts/tools/instruments will be terms used as synonyms of digital stories, or simply stories - "STORIES OF ALL, STORIES FOR ALL".