Effectively implementing
educational tools in classes
Effectively implementing
educational tools in classes
AdAPPtive aims to help struggling readers in primary schools through an increased use of IT tools. Its objective is the effective and sustained adoption of at least one digital reading app in 16 schools (IRL, B, CZ, NL) by the end of the project. 4 Communities of Practice (COPs) peopled by Primary School teachers, are supported by universities (DCU and KU Leuven), Dyslexia centres (DYS Centre and RID) and 1 app Developer (HAPPS) throughout the project. The success of the COP approach will be tested by measuring progress made by teachers and learners alike.
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Teachers everywhere face major time and resource challenges. Their schedules are always full. Despite this, all the schools involved stayed committed to the project. The fact that all schools in the project managed to continue to participate in the project over the lifetime of the project speaks to the determination of the teachers to support their students and also to the support of the school principals/directors for the Erasmus+ AdAPPtive project, but also confirms the success of the CoP methodology.
Primary schools spend a lot of time helping kids to learn to read and to enjoy it, including reading on digital devices. But even with all the new tech out there, schools don’t often use reading apps to help kids who struggle. The AdAPPTive team wanted to change that by encouraging teachers to consistently work with a chosen app (3 yrs) and in doing so, to find out what challenges they faced. The goal we achieved was that their Communities of Practice identified successful practice, discussed the hurdles and shared solutions which led to guidelines for all teachers wishing to use digital reading apps in the classroom.
AdAPPtive used Communities of Practice (CoPs) (Wenger, 1998) to help solve real-world challenges in education. CoPs have been seen as useful for making education more inclusive (Ainscow, 2005), but there hasn’t been much research on how they can help teachers try out new inclusive ideas—like using digital reading apps to support struggling readers. There’s also been little research on how CoPs affect student progress. To explore this, we looked at reading performance before and after the project, and also gathered feedback on students’ motivation to read.
The AdAPPtive project led to real progress for students, teachers, developers, and researchers—boosting reading outcomes, teaching skills, and collaboration between schools across Europe. Find the full summary by target group to see how each part of the project made a difference.
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We are a consortium of 5 partners from 4 European countries coming together by a common vision to find the best way to implement digital tools in the current educational landscape.
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Communities of practice refers to groups of people who share a concern or a passion for a topic, a craft, and/or a profession (Wenger 1998, 2006). These individuals deepen their knowledge and expertise through regular interaction with each other (Wenger 2006; Wenger et al. 2002).AdAPPtive chose the approach of Communities of Practice for upskilling teachers as it will allow them to learn about Digital Reading Apps (DRAs) in an informal, informative and non-judgemental environment. This will give them the knowledge and competence to use DRAs with their students to improve their reading fluency.
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Teachers reflected on how reading apps can boost motivation and support students with reading difficulties. Despite technical hurdles, teachers saw real progress and valued the exchange of experiences, and plan to continue app use, inspired by the project’s positive impact.
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In this meeting at primary school Icarus, the focus was on two themes: (1) how to find the app or components of an app that best meet an individual student's specific challenges, and (2) how to most effectively integrate apps with daily classroom instruction.
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We met at primary school De Ark, shared experiences with the apps Taalzee and Klankkr8, and explored in small groups how the results from the apps’ back-end can be used to provide more targeted support in the classroom.
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