In our digital society, children widely use new media technologies and ICT tools everywhere diffused, starting at very young age. Although the role of ICT in education is becoming increasingly important and acknowledged as one of the first objectives towards the Digital Competence in the EU2020 strategy, from the point of view of ECEC the use of new media technology in preschool education has not found yet an appropriated, shared and acknowledged pedagogical paradigm and curriculum framework. In this perspective, the “STORIES proposal” aims at developing a set of guidelines / recommendations (pedagogical approach, methodology, spaces, tools, best practises) with related competence framework and training guidelines for teachers to design and foster media literacy activities and practices through digital storytelling strategies in Early Childhood Education (ECEC). The action is foreseen as a contribution to nurturing quality in ECEC for a creative use of digital media, being – within the others benefits – the acquisition of media literacy competences in infancy a pre-requirement for an effective development of the digital competence within the EU2020 strategy and lifelong learning. Given these premises, the STORIES proposal leverages on the pedagogical paradigm of Digital StoryTelling (DST) to elaborate this framework to address the need of media education / literacy in infancy, promoting a participatory action-research that builds upon the DST paradigm in preschool 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, by - 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 target groups are represented by: • Kindergartens teachers (from at least 4 European countries) who will attend the STORIES’s training course on DST in early childhood and who will be involved in the educational experimental activities, supported and supervised by academic researchers.At least of a total 80 teachers will be involved. • Children aged 4/5 years (preschool) that will be involved in innovative educational practices on media literacy and digital storytelling by their trained teachers. At least 1200 children will be involved in experimental activities. The proposal IOs are: IO1 - MANUAL OF BEST PRACTICES OF DST IN ECEC IO2 - SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IO3 - TRAINING REFERENCE FRAMEWORK FOR DST IN ECEC IO4 - ONLINE PLATFORM IO5 - EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTATION IO6 - GUIDELINES ON MEDIA LITERACY THROUGT DST Briefly, the macro-task of the project plan are: 1° year (M1-M12): SoA research, teacher training course, design of educational activities 2° year (M12-M30): Research and experimentation of activities in kindergartens / scientific observation in parallel 3° year (M30-36): Documentation, analysis of practices, development of guidelines In relation to the goals, the STORIES will take advantage of the collaboration of an interdisciplinary and international group of researchers experienced in projects devoted to media in infancy. This way, it will be possible to enlarge the experimental sample to a EU dimension and to compare results in different cultural establishments in view of a best exploitation of the results in the EU roadmap for enhancing quality in ECEC. The desired impact foresees the following: - Enhancing awareness in creative use of digital media and DTS in ECEC - Promoting the innovation in regional/national/EU policies - Enhancing teachers’ skills and competences and reuse of the STORIES training model among ECEC teachers in Europe (local)