TIDE participates in a new Erasmus+ project: BLENDI, Blended Learning for Inclusion.

PROJECT WEBSITE: https://www.blendedinclusion.eu/home/

Students from disadvantaged and/or migrant backgrounds have fewer opportunities in accessing digital technologies and in the ways they use these technologies. In turn, this situation leads to students’ less participation in several aspects of society such as economic, social, political, cultural, spatial and institutional.

Especially by taking into account the online-offline blend of our society it is suggested that blended learning can help students to develop their digital skills. However, students need help from digitally competent teachers in using DT. According to the European Commission’s Action Plan for digital education, EU needs more digitally competent educators. Having digitally competent educators means that teachers are required to develop their digital skills but, at the same time, to revise their pedagogy. In this era, revising their pedagogy is related to being able to use digital technologies for including all children in the learning process, particularly those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. The aim of BLENDI is to empower educators in using blended learning in schools, in an attempt to deal with the social and educational exclusion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The project has been designed for addressing specific national and European needs, regarding the project’s target groups, namely students and teachers, as follows:

- To develop an innovative practical digital toolkit and a blended training course that will help teachers in using blended learning in schools based on the principles of inclusive education.

- To foster the digital skills of teachers based on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators

- To empower students in expressing their views about their learning in a digital pedagogical context, enhancing in this way the collaboration between teachers and students in digital environments.

- To contribute to the effective and permanent inclusion of all students, supporting their right for education, equality and self-realization.

The BLENDI approach involves a combination of the BLENDI platform, the BLENDI toolkit, a blended training course for teachers, guidelines for creating dialectical-synergic blended lessons plans (co-creation of lesson plans between teachers and students) and the creation of such lessons plans. Teachers will be trained in using the BLENDI approach which focuses on the use of blended learning in schools based on logic of inclusion while students will be supported in decision-making regarding their learning process in digital educational contexts.

Main related paper: Albó, L., Stylianidou, N., Chalatsis, X., Dieckmann, M., & Hernández-Leo, D. (2021). Including Students’ Voices in the Design of Blended Learning Lesson Plans. In Technology-Enhanced Learning for a Free, Safe, and Sustainable World: 16th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2021, Bolzano, Italy, September 20-24, 2021, Proceedings 16 (pp. 419-423). Springer International Publishing.