Blue Arrow

Once upon a time there was a big arrow, blue-painted, on a train. A toy train. This blue train was in a shop window with other toys. And… during the night these toys decided to take on live of its own to reach the children that needed each of these toys, priceless. The only logic was the affinity with each worthy child. This is not Disney’s Toy Story, but this is the plot of a tale (Blue Arrow/La Freccia Azzurra) written by Gianni Rodari in 1964 and brought as cartoon in 1996 by an European coproduction between Italy, Switzerland and Luxemburg. The BLUE ARROW project borrows the name starting from the metaphors of the story and with the aim to be in memory of Gianni Rodari, in the centenary of his born (23 October 1920), the Italian author of children literature famous all over the Europe and world that won the prestigious and biennial Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1970 for child literature. The BLUE ARROW project works on the metaphors that starts from the Rodari’s book. The main aim is the improvement of the teacher education of pre-primary and primary in higher education institutions Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) by providing new tools and new methodologies. During the pandemic crisis, the teaching sector exposed its fragilities and its adaptability. Europe is also facing a great challenge to provide sufficient and better-quality education and raining to the teachers of tomorrow as the pandemic has come suddenly and brought several impacts on different levels. More than 100 million people who are directly related to education sector globally have been severely affected (Gabriel, 2020) and many of them have been trying to turn their traditional face-to-face (f2f) education into digital one. The new approaches for teaching during the COVID-19 lockdowns have a huge impact on the education in kindergartens and primary schools, in particular in the range of age 4-7, where children needs to learn by experience, drawing or manipulating things without writing and reading skills. UN, in a worldwide scale says that “the disruptions caused by COVID-19 to everyday life meant that as many as 40 million children worldwide have missed out on early childhood education in their critical pre-school year”. This is problematic because “they thus missed a stimulating and enriching environment, learning opportunities”. Declaratory learning, based on traditional didactical material, is easily to be exported in distance learning: MOOCs and videoconferences are perfect in this case. But in the case of children that are not able to read and write, the procedural learning that refers to experience and laboratorial activities involving the senses is fundamental and is needed a rethinking when schools close and lessons are in front on a screen. Theis rethink should start from the new competences for the teachers, through the teacher education in HEIs. The BLUE ARROW project is funded by an Erasmus+ Project, a Strategic Partnership Key Action 2 in Higher Education, Grant Agreement 2020-1-IT02-KA226-HE-095644. The BLUE ARROW project aims to create an innovative pedagogical approach for teacher education that involve the development of a MOOC and the implementation of these practices in higher education courses for teacher education for the new challenge of distance learning: - including new ways to teach applying digital creativity, - proposing user-friendly tools and secure platforms which respect privacy and ethical standards, - developing new innovative educational methods for pre-primary and primary educators applying Tangible User Interfaces. A synergic and complementary Partnership was built: BLUE ARROW includes 3 pedagogical HEIs (Università di Foggia (Leader), University of Barcelona and Reald University College) in teacher education (Initial Teacher Training and Continous Professional Development); a SME expert in TEL ground-breaking devices (Smarted srl that submit in this call) and an association of HEIs in distance learning (EADTU). Four countries are represented (Italy, Spain, Netherland and Albania) BLUE ARROW will produce the following outcomes: 1. A pedagogical framework in the field of teacher education aimed at the improvement of competences of pre-primary and primary teachers about distance teaching, also a response on COVID-19 situation. 2. A MOOC with lessons held by teacher educators in HEIs (O2), with an International presentation . 3. An ICT platform that will be embed in the MOOC, based on Tangible User Interface paradigm, that allows the management of laboratory activities in teaching for children between 4 and 7 years old, including a multisensory approach based on exercises co-created with teacher educators and other learning experts. 4. A report that will show the results and the impact of the BLUE ARROW methodology and technology and the guideline for a reapplication in other contexts. 5. A series of co-creation events in 4 countries with experts where they will evaluate and propose new laboratory exercises with TUIs for distance teaching and valuate the implementation 6. An annual international conference on distance and blended learning for pre-primary and primary teachers (E10). OUR INNOVATION In particular in this call for GJC we present the third point: the multisensory exercises with tangible objects and connected with the digital interfaces. Each kit that will be created will include: 1. An NFC antenna, it is a hardware, namely an active board (an NFC antenna covered by plexiglass and connected via USB to PC or tablet) that can "recognize" tangible materials (tagged with NFC sensors) to allow the digital environment (stories interface on tablet or computer) to give feedback. (see that prototype delivered by SM for children education https://youtu.be/58RyzCDUsdU and Annex I). 2. A set of specific tangible objects for the kit based on the exercises delivered and co-created with teacher educators and teachers. All exercises will exploit Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) allows the children (and teachers) to interact with tangible and multisensorial objects, then physical objects could be recognized by a digital component. The objects will be based on well known psycho-pedagogical practices as logic blocks, number cards, tangram, teaching tiles, everyday objects. The tangible objects could also foster a multisensory approach, in some previous experiences (Ponticorvo et al. 2017 see Annex II). 3. A software empowered with adaptive artificial tutors (IA competent) that will orchestrate the interaction between the learner and the platform, providing feedbacks, corrections, suggestions, and proposals of some in-depth study. It has a high degree of transferability because each teacher or child could use independently, and the difficulty of the exercises will be personalized and adapted on the learner’s previous performance. The Consortium estimate that the BLUE ARROW Kit will have a relevant impact in the teacher education, providing a new solution for laboratorial activities in children education. This is a new approach for contrasting the consequences of COVID-19 lockdowns or the needs to sustain a blended or a distance learning. In addition, the provided solution has an excellent grade of inclusion because promote a learning/teaching based also to a sensory approach that is tailored for children with special needs (deafblind, sensory impairment, autism spectrum disorder, etc.)