| Total Budget | € 1.448.889,00 |
| Start date | 12/2023 |
| End date | 12/2026 |
| Website | NA |
Funding programme:
- Erasmus+ / Forward looking projects
Partners:
- Algebra University (Croatia)
- Partners in Learning (Croatia)
- University of A Coruña (Spain)
- Vilnius University (Lithuania)
- Turku University (Finland)
- Faculty of Education (Slovenia)
- Ministry of Education (Slovenia)
- Primary school brothers Polancic Maribor (Slovenia)
- Primary school of Tone Cufar Maribor (Slovenia)
- Escola Secundaria de Rocha Peixoto (Portugal)
- Project LightHouse (Greege)
- T-HAP (Cyprus)
- Istituto Tecnico Industrial “Ferraris Pancaldo” (Italy)
- Secondary school “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” (Bulgaria)
- All Digital (Belgium)
About the project
DIGITAL FIRST is an attempt to devise a new, innovative pedagogical approach to informatics, which respects the fact that children we teach have been born into the digital world, they do not know any other way: digital is the language they speak, they currency they exchange. We argue that 21st century children are often more fluent in digital language than in their mother tongue. And just like in language acquisition, native speakers learn how to express meaning in a sentence (function) and not how to conjugate verbs (structure), we argue that the same principle should be applied to teaching informatics for digital natives. DIGITAL FIRST will form a European network in which the functional approach to teaching informatics will be co-created and co-designed and piloted.
More information
“Digital technology as the first language: informatics for digital natives” is an initiative aimed at creating a modern approach to teaching informatics in primary and secondary schools across Europe. The project consortium consists of 15 organizations including universities, centers for professional development of teachers, primary and secondary schools, non-governmental organizations and public bodies from 11 European countries. The project partners will work together on the transformation of IT education so that it is in line with the needs of digital natives – children who were born in the digital world and who already at the very beginning of their school education possess a certain level of digital skills.
The goal of the project is to transition from the traditional approach to teaching computer science based on programming languages and technical knowledge to innovative pedagogical approaches focused on computational thinking so that students can successfully solve real-life challenges. This change in teaching will encourage the young generation to turn from “passive consumers” into “active creators” of the digital world. Based on the research and data collection on IT education across Europe, which will be carried out at the beginning of this three-year project, innovative pedagogical approaches will be developed and tested in Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Special emphasis is placed on the professional development of education service providers, as well as on the empowerment of teachers through numerous opportunities for learning and sharing experiences, including a network of computer science teachers and appropriate educational materials. All stakeholders will be invited to join the project dialogue clubs that will be organized in each country participating in the project in order to express their opinion and their view on creating the future of IT education. The results of the project and the collected data will also contribute to the improvement of national policies and guidelines of the European Union towards the creation of the future of digital education.
Contact
