“Q-Tales” is a Collaboration Ecosystem, specifically designed to serve the needs of the European Children e-book industry, where European Creative SMEs, Experts and Parents, co-create new or transform existing Children Literature into high quality e-books & Apps using innovative ICT solutions provided by European ICT SMEs along with a Curation Framework provided by European Academic experts in the field of Pedagogy, Children Psychology and evolutionary Psychology. The specific objectives of the project are summarized below: • Objective 1: Build the Q-Tales Collaboration Platform and respective ecosystem, including Gamification Aspects, where European self-publishers, authors, illustrators, voice actors, animators and other related SMEs & professionals will find & submit industry news, communicate, offer & receive services and collaborate. • Objective 2: Develop the Q-Tales Authoring Tool, featuring an easy-to-use interface with powerful and sophisticated authoring features which will be used to create the Q-Tales e-books and apps, incorporating the Q-Tales Ontology and utilizing gamification techniques. • Objective 3: Launch the Q-Tales Store where the authored e-books and apps will be offered worldwide. • Objective 4: Define the Technical and Pedagogical Q-Tales Curation Frameworks, in order to ensure that every single item sold is, technically perfect and better connected with current academic developments in the fields of child / evolutionary psychology while offering a scent of “Europeanness”, whilst incorporating nation- and country-specific literacy cultural and linguistic elements. • Objective 5: Develop a new breed of in-app analytics services. • Objective 6: Identify & Connect with established European Children Literature Content Providers and Sources. • Objective 7: Establish Q-Tales as a Brand Name with European Publishing Industry. • Objective 8: Introduce the Q-Tales Awards as an annual creativity competition.

The STORIES project aims to contribute to a dynamic future of children’s ebooks evolution by a) developing user-friendly interfaces for young students (10-12 years old) to create their own multi-path stories expressing their imagination and creativity and b) by integrating the latest AR, VR and 3D printing technologies to visualize their stories in numerous innovative ways. In the heart of this intervention lies the vision for integrated curricula and deeper learning outcomes. The project will offer these innovations through a single environment, the STORIES Storytelling Platform which will be the place for students’ artistic expression and scientific inquiry at the same time. The creations of the students (paintings, models, dioramas and constructions, 3D objects and landscapes, animations, science videos and science theatre plays) will be captured and integrated in the form of interactive ebooks. The STORIES technical team will design advanced interfaces in which students will be able to augment characters, buildings, greenhouses and different 3D geometrical structures on a tablet or their computer and inspect their work using a mobile device. The outcome of their work will be detected and tracked, and the video stream is augmented with an animated 3D version of the character or the artefact. The platform will be tested in real settings in Germany, Greece, Portugal, France, Finland and Japan, involving 60 teachers and 3000 students (5th and 6th grade). To achieve this, the proposed project is developing a novel cooperation between creative industries and electronic publishing, educational research institutions in the field of STEM, schools and informal learning centres. The consortium includes 15 partners from Europe, USA, Japan and Australia. But STORIES is going beyond that: The consortium will cooperate in the design of the platform and in the development of the storyline mechanism with Eugene (Eugenios) Trivizas, well known writer of children's books.