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POLYGLOT-Multilingual education in preschool age
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Due to the linguistic and cultural reality of a widened Europe (EU 28), multilingual education already at a pre-school age proves to be clearly necessary. More than 50% of Europeans are either bilingual or live in an environment where they are confronted with 2 or more languages, especially people living in border regions, migrants and people whose parents speak a language other than the national language. Language acquisition and language enhancement gets more and more important for an intercultural dialogue in our society and for increasing job chances of individuals. As children are especially receptive to learning languages at an early age, linguistic competences and a multilingual education should be implemented in Europe’s kindergartens. Open Education Resources (OER) have been defined by UNESCO as "teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution". The last 10 years have seen the exponential diffusion of web based OER. Thanks to the internet is possible to access ubiquitously, 24/24, a large array OER that can be used for bilingual education of children. These are training materials expressly developed for bilingual education based on e-books, videos, Apps and other specific software. Additionally, the web allows free access to written texts, videos, cartoons and TV and radio programs in many different languages developed for native children that can be used directly for L2 learning. From and educational point of view, the Internet has widened the possibilities for not formal and informal learning and for individualized learning strategies. The European Commission Communication Rethinking Education: Investing in skills for better socio-economic outcomes (2012) stresses the necessity to foster early language learning, to tap into the potential of ICT and Open Educational Resources for learning, to scale-up use of ICT in learning and teaching. According to these priorities, this project will develop a methodology and tools helping educators and parents to use web based OER for bilingual education in preschool. More in detail, POLY will develop: • two reports, one on the State of the art on bi- and multilingual education in kindergartens and the other one on web based OER (including free or very cheap Apps) for bilingual education • a set of Guidelines on the use of web based OER for bi-lingual education in kindergartens, and, based on this, • two Guides and a two E-courses addressed respectively to educators and parents om ow to use OER for fostering bi-linguism in children at pre-school age. The project is submitted by a consortium of organizations managing kindergartens in AT, BG, ES, TR, or cooperating with them (IT), and by research organization specialized in using ICT methodologies for learning (CY). Thanks to the project 390 educators, 360 parents and 1500 children will experience the methodology. Additionally, over 15000 people belonging to the target groups will be informed about the project. Long term benefits will be an improved use of web based OER for bi-lingual education of children in pre-school age by educators and by their parents, both producing an improvement in L2 learning and diffusion.
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