The DigLit project (https://diglit.eu/) provides a means for ESL/EFL teachers to share and embed innovative teaching practices to enhance awareness of social inequalities, diversity, and equality through the usage of young adult literature in combination with popular smart phones app. At the same time, it will increase pupils’ cultural and equality awareness which will eventually influence their critical thinking, as well as their social and civic competences. DigLit will also support digital competences for teacher and pupils, specifically in times of Covid-19. DigLit involves the collection and uploading of media files on the project website dealing with young adult literature as well as a freely available collection of young adult literature that discusses aspects of diversity and equality by featuring marginalized groups. These media files will derive from the usage of popular apps on smartphones and will center the pupils’ narratives. This collection will act as a platform for diversity and equality awareness and digital upskilling. Teachers will be trained in the use of digital media in combination with young adult literature and pupils will conduct and lead on their collection and editing. The DigLit project is driven by the principle that innovative teaching resources form part of broader pedagogic strategies that can actively help tackle issues of social inequality. It facilitates action that address issues of diversity and equality common across the EU as declared in the Paris Declaration from 2015. The importance of enhancing social, civic, and intercultural competences, critical thinking and media literacy as well as fostering the education of disadvantaged children and young adults were at the heart of the Paris Declaration and DigLit’s aim and objectives are closely aligned with many of the recommendations made in the declaration.
With a network of teachers, education academics, students, and technicians, the main objective is to create an online digital toolkit (DigLit Toolkit) for the ESL/EFL classroom that uses young adult literature in combination with popular smartphone apps to combat social inequalities.
The project proposes also four sub-objectives:
Obj. 1: Developing ESL/EFL methodologies to support school use of the DigLit Toolbox integrated in the curriculums
Obj. 2: Creating a Pupil Guide to facilitate the application of the toolkit
Obj. 3: Producing a collection of Young Adult Literature for ESL/EFL available on the website
Obj. 4: Producing a collection of media files to use in school and community settings
DigLit seeks to bring the participating organizations together to develop and share practices in order to produce resources that other schools can use free of charge. This will enable teachers across Europe to develop a shared understanding of the key issue which is crucial in the current Covid-19 situation. The toolkit will provide a meaningful resource in times of crises that critically engages with the aspects of social inequality and at the same time tackles them by using smartphones instead of other technological devices that might not be available for every pupil. The Consortium consists of 6 partners, bringing together a balanced mix of high educational institutions and schools from Austria, Italy, and Hungary. All have expertise in the development of skills for education with the aim of creating intercultural and digital learning for pupils in European schools. Coming from different European regions and sharing already a strong strength due to previous collaborations, they make a varied and committed Consortium.
DigLit will have three key impacts:
1) Participants will be encouraged to reappraise their attitudes towards diversity and equality. Marginalized voices in the literature used in the project will enable them to reassess prejudice, re-calibrate their views and attitudes towards minority groups and re-educate them in diversity and equality matters.
2) The participants will be provided with an additional approach in the form of a digital toolkit to teaching literature in the ESL/EFL classroom through the use of smartphones. This developed approach will expand the participant’s understanding of teaching literature in the EFL/ESL classroom and will specifically impact their remote teaching skills.
3) DigLit is an outreach tool. It enables students to represent their livelihood by using popular smart phone Apps such as TikTok and Snapchat. The familiarity of these technological applications will encourage them to participate in the project and to share their personal narratives.
Project website: https://diglit.eu/