LIBrary as online Educational Repository Techniques in European Community pre- schools

<< Background >>Project idea is set on pursuing a more and more high quality ECEC and revolved around its need of innovation by updating the digital competences of educators and preschool teachers to deal with their daily educational activities and managerial procedures, especially the documentary task. The common reflection on such issues as modernization and digital readiness within the ECEC system found in the 2020 pandemic emergency its trigger (LIBERTEC was submitted in the 2021 Erasmus+ Call), evidencing the need to update the digital skills owned by the operators as well as to innovate the work strategies adopting digital aids to improve, speed and make them more effective. Therefore, the project’s focus was valuing the role of pedagogical documentation within the ECEC system, and the key contribution ascribed to the ICT to carry out this task as well as to support managerial and educational activities. The digital upskilling of educators and teachers was set considering their professional needs to outline a package of competences recalling the 6 Areas of the European Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigCompEdu) but carefully adapted to the specific features of work within the ECEC.<< Objectives >>LIBERTEC aimed at developing a methodological proposal to carry out the documentary task in a digitized way based on the pedagogical features of the work in ECEC and on the real needs of the 0-6 professionals: the LIBERTEC Guidelines. Guidelines offer to teachers & educators an overview on the best European educational practices for the 0-6 age range and –above all- an innovative model to perform the traditional documentation of daily pedagogical & management work with ICT supports. In pursuing this primary objective, partners intended also to contribute the quality improvement of the 0-6 System working on its modernization and on the operators’ competences upgrade (especially on digital skills), making the ECEC more digitally resilient and ready to face today educational challenges. The specific activities required to design and implement the Guidelines enhanced the sharing/exchange of the good pedagogical and management practices in use in partner countries for early childhood (kindergarten, preschools, other services for 0-6 children) as well as their valorization. This further common purpose contributed to a more modern, inclusive, high-quality childhood education with a European added value.<< Implementation >>The activities covered all the essential aspects required to ensure the LIBERTEC good running, the reaching of its expected goals, and the successful implementation of its core result (R1-Guidelines) as well as its sharing, promotion & valorization.• PMI activities, necessary to the whole work management and partnership cooperation, also including the online coordination sessions (the virtual meetings) and the different kind of transversal actions such as assessment & dissemination• Transnational coordination in presence (KOM Florence, TPM1 Lisbon, TPM2 Malaga, TPM3 Suceava, TPM4 Final Florence).• Guidelines implementation, core activity split in work-phases: 1) ECEC good practices mapping & exchange, educators’ need analysis and ECEC EU Compendium release; 2) GUIDELINES contents drafting; 3) Testing & Evaluation composed by: A) LTTA in ES, to train a selected group of operators coming from each partner country on GUIDELINES, B) LOCAL WORKSHOPS, to widen the operators’ training on digitized documentation methodologies and prepare an effective setting for the field test, C) EXPERIMENTATION IN EACH COUNTRY; 4) Final refinement & validation. • Guidelines Final sharing & valorization (Multiplier Events in partner countries).<< Results >>The project output is an original methodological proposal for digitized pedagogical documentation for ECEC teachers, educators & pedagogical coordinators: the so-called LIBERTEC Guidelines. They include a collection of good practices for the 3 main activities considered essential in early childhood pedagogy (Management of daily routines; Definition of play/teaching spaces; Pedagogical documentation) for their fruitful sharing/borrowing among EU ECEC organizations (Part I) and a special focus on digitized documentation and on the required competences for this task (Part II). Guidelines give indications on how to combine the traditional paper method to track preschool daily work with the digital one and list several programs useful to support the educational equipe in daily assignments. Adopting a digitized repository for management procedures and pedagogical strategies can support the staff, the users (children & families), and institutional parts & stakeholders in a fully functional ECEC system.The ECEC Compendium is as collateral output summarizing the results of the project preliminary research offering a rich reading of the 0-6 system in partner countries showing familiarities, differences, strengths, lacks and policy trends.