"Current situation: Children come already into contact with a variety of media in early childhood. In addition to classic media such as children's books, radio play cassettes, television and radio, more and more new media such as smart phones, tablets and iPad are entering the children's room. Interacting with the Internet has become a part of the children’s everyday life. Children's worlds are the media worlds. Children bring their ""media trails"" into their facilities and thus they should be accompanied by pedagogically educated adults both in the daycare centres and in the family environment in the processing of their experiences. At the same time, conscious handling of the children regarding the media in the daycare centres has to be strengthened. In order to make the children aware of the usefulness and the effect of media, we need specialists in the kindergarten schools who have practical knowledge of the subject of media education and the ability to implement this within their pedagogical work with the children. It is a fact that this kind of staff is not sufficiently available and thus there are very often strong barriers to use these media by pedagogically trained staff. This is where the project starts. To achieve this, a target group-oriented qualification of the pedagogical staff is necessary. There is also a pool of materials, such as guidance, methodologies, e-learning offers or practical examples that are essential in order to eliminate the barriers to the children's targeted media education that the daycare staff can use. The project is focusing on rural areas, which lack specialised staff and they have at their disposal poor pedagogical material and consequently information technology conditions tighten the problem. Project theme & objectives: The objectives of the project are the creation of innovative solutions for the development of media pedagogical competences using ICT and the acquisition of digital skills of the specialists in child daycare centres and similar establishments, especially in rural regions. The teaching of knowledge aims at applying innovative methods and pedagogical approaches to educate children how to use digital media. Substantial synergies can be used through international cooperation. Different levels, approaches and methods of solution in the partner countries can be transferred. This is particularly possible due to the fact that the IT platforms are essentially the same in the participating countries and are bound to lead to transnational sustainable innovations. The project responds to the fact that children's worlds are also media worlds through the use of tablets, smart phones, PCs and the like. Specialists in institutions need practical suggestions for media education in educational concepts and concrete activities with children. Rural areas are disadvantaged as educational places, in particular in the ICT sector, because equipment and, first of all, specialists are few and far between. ICT itself is important for the quality of life of rural areas. The disengagement of regions and the exclusion of social groups are threatening. All rural European regions face similar problems. Intellectual Outputs 1. Creation of a requirements catalog based on an analysis 2. Development of a training and further education concept with a manual, which contains learning contents, learning objectives, method descriptions, sequence plans and instructions for the implementation of learning units. This is not yet the case, especially for this type of region. International exchange will lead to added value of the innovative character of this output. 3. In addition to the manual, special e-learning user tools will be developed and made available for transfer as IO (consulting and coaching methods). 4. The collection of successful application examples of IT-based learning in different application fields will be a relevant transfer module (new forms of education transfer). 5. A suitable method for evaluating, validating and crediting learning services, which will be specified for the regional conditions, will be made by means of online-based test methods for educators. 6. Development of a multilingual Internet portal for the allocation of the IO's, but also other offers such as e-learning, blogs of the current development, competence checks, information, FAQs and so on. Target groups: A direct target group are the nursery school teachers in the children's daycare centres and similar establishments. In addition, the professional actors or institutions involved in early childhood / preschool education (e.g. administrators) should be included in the transfer and thus benefit. This also applies to institutions for the guidance of professionals."

"<< Background >>Action-oriented media literacy is a central key competence in a society significantly influenced by digitisation as well as in everyday life and the professional environment. Thus, competences of the digital world are becoming a central prerequisite for social participation and they are imperative for a successful educational and professional career. Learning and living in the context of increasing digitisation and critical reflection will be integral parts of our society in the future.""The term 'action orientation' is essentially based on the reform pedagogical concept of action learning, which focuses on linking practical and theoretical knowledge acquisition. The common catchword here is 'learning by doing'."" (www.medien-weiter-bildung.de 2021). Making is fully in line with the principle of action-oriented media education and is also referred to as a ""media education door opener"" (medienimpulse, Jg. 58, Nr. 4, 2020). The diversity of free experimentation, creative problem solving and improvisation makes action-oriented forms and different learning paths of media education possible. Reflection on doing is an essential principle of the action-oriented perspective. In the last decade, there has been an unprecedented boom of communities engaged in DIY activities. Events such as the Maker Faire or the European Maker Week, which are supported by the EU Commission, play an important role in promoting the so-called ""maker movement"".(cf. JRC, Overview of the Maker Movement in the EU, EU 2017).However, there are clear differences in the development and growth of the maker movement across the EU. This becomes clearest in a comparison of the EU28 states when looking at the existing Makerspaces per million inhabitants (p.e.). (cf. ibid.)Four of the EU28 states are involved in the project, which clearly shows the different levels of development on a pan-European scale and is thus quite representative. With the MakerEDU project, we are creating the opportunity to train educational professionals as multipliers in the field of making and the opportunity to pass on action-oriented media literacy to children and young people throughout Europe. The prerequisite for the latter, however, is that educators themselves deal with these topics and develop the corresponding competences. At the moment, especially in rural areas, there is not only a lack of didactic methods and teaching and learning materials that support exploratory learning, but also a lack of appropriate premises and technical equipment. One way to support professionals in their media pedagogical mission is to offer appropriate further training and handouts on how to implement the knowledge they have learned. Makerspaces and making activities, as innovative practices, offer the possibility to actively promote creative competences, to enable access to and use of (digital) technologies and to consciously combine social interaction. This enables meaningful participation in an increasingly digital world.<< Objectives >>The following activities will be implemented to achieve the project objective:1.development of a vocational training manual for educational staff with appropriate theoretical background knowledge on action-oriented media literacy and making, methods and didactics as well as learning experiences and learning goals for children and young people.2.development of a catalogue of requirements for a makerspace in rural regions of Europe with a concept for Future use of the premises.3.to create a collection of practice-proven, topic-related and target group-specific pedagogical practical instructions for concrete teaching and learning with children and young people in a makerspace.A planned Maker's Conference per partner country and an international training seminar are central elements of the dissemination of the project results. The direct target group of the pedagogical staff needs to be reached. Support is provided by stakeholders from the public and private (vocational) education sector, such as kindergartens, schools, youth and social institutions or youth welfare offices, as well as representatives from politics and society.<< Implementation >>The following activities will be implemented to achieve the project objective:1.development of a vocational training manual for educational staff with appropriate theoretical background knowledge on action-oriented media literacy and making, methods and didactics as well as learning experiences and learning goals for children and young people.2.development of a catalogue of requirements for a makerspace in rural regions of Europe with a concept for space utilisation.3.to create a collection of practice-proven, topic-related and target group-specific pedagogical practical instructions for concrete teaching and learning with children and young people in a makerspace.A planned Maker's Conference per partner country and an international training seminar are central elements of the dissemination of the project results. The direct target group of the pedagogical staff needs to be reached. Support is provided by stakeholders from the public and private (vocational) education sector, such as kindergartens, schools, youth and social institutions or youth welfare offices, as well as representatives from politics and society.<< Results >>The training manual developed in the project forms the basis for increasing the competences of educational professionals in the field of using digital media in everyday professional life - be it in school lessons, in media education or in imparting digital knowledge. The further training courses developed in the project also provide the participants with the skills to set up and use a Makerspace in their own institution. Learning these new methods and instruments together with the pedagogical practical instructions developed in the project increase the quality of the knowledge transfer. The pedagogical professionals are thereby enabled to master the upcoming challenges in their everyday professional life. In this way, the pedagogical professionals and thus the teaching institutions employing them will be in a better future position to integrate digital media into lessons or educational offers in an action-oriented way.Children and young people benefit from a practice-oriented and action-oriented media education imparted by the educational professionals. In turn, they strengthen their competences and increasingly develop motivation to engage in the future-oriented STEM subjects. The knowledge acquired by the children and young people in the area of making is closely linked to an increase in self-efficacy and the ability to cooperate; it inspires creativity and strengthens resilience.This significantly improves the starting position for children and young people to assert themselves in the digital professional world.The staff of the participating institutions trained in the project also strengthen their digital media competences and their media pedagogical skills in order to contribute to increasing the quality of their educational offers."

"Media literacy is a central key competence in a society, where everyday life and the working world are significantly influenced by digitisation. Thus, competencies in the digital world are becoming a central prerequisite for social participation and they are absolutely necessary for a successful educational and professional career.Dealing with digital media is part of everyday life in European families today, also and especially in rural areas. Children are more and more likely to come into contact with digital media, whether by observing their parents or siblings when using them or because they themselves use them. However, the relevance of digital media use for a child or adolescent and the direction in which media use develops depends to a large extent on the parents' media education.Adults often mistake fast and technical operating skills for extensive media literacy. However, children and adolescents need support above all in the selection of media content as well as in the processing and regulation of the period of use. Due to the location-independent and permanent access to digital content, parents have less opportunity to keep track of their children's content and usage times. There is therefore often great uncertainty with regard to the media education of their children.A major goal of the project is therefore to enable parents to deal with the topic and to provide them with sufficient information. One way to support parents in their media education tasks is to offer themed and institutionally detached parents' evenings. In this way, media-pedagogical knowledge and practical handouts can be imparted in a way that is suitable for everyday use in home education and can be developed together in a common exchange.Especially in rural regions across Europe, there is a lack of trained media educators. Parents and adults from different professional backgrounds, such as educational specialists or lecturers, can be the right partners in the future.The following activities will be implemented to achieve the project objective:1.Development of an advanced training concept for the realisation of topic-related and target group-oriented e-learning courses (adapted to different age groups of children) to qualify as MediaParent consultants in form of a curriculum.2.Development of an e-learning platform with target group-specific courses on various media education topics to qualify as a MediaParent consultant. Such a digital course offer, open to everyone, is not yet available, especially for this type of region. Due to the international cooperation, this platform would gain an innovative character.3.Establishment of a collection of practice-proven, topic-related and target-group-specific materials for preparation and follow-up as well as implementation of media-pedagogical parents' evenings. This collection of materials should relieve the ""voluntary"" consultants of time and work and so increase the willingness to hold a parents' evening.4.A suitable and to the regional conditions’ specific method for the evaluation of learning performance for future MediaParent consultants will be developed. The evaluation will be carried out through online-based test procedures. The participant will receive a certificate of participation as proof of acquired knowledge. As the competence assessment will be online-based, it is particularly suitable for rural areas.5.Development of a database as a background for a dynamic map in the frontend, which serves to find MediaParent consultants in the surrounding area. In addition, registered MediaParent consultants can use the platform for exchange and networking amongst each other and across national borders. Two planned conferences per partner country and an international training seminar are central elements of the dissemination of the project results. They are intended to reach parents and adults of all professional backgrounds, pedagogical professionals, social workers and lecturers as the direct target group. Support will be provided by stakeholders from the public and private education sector, such as kindergartens, schools, youth and social institutions or youth welfare offices, as well as representatives from politics and society.All results can be used independently and transferred to other thematic fields as well as to other European regions.With the international cooperation of partners from 5 European countries, important competences can be bundled and transferred. The necessity to carry out this project transnationally results from the fact that the problem of media literacy promotion of families is a general problem across all European countries. The digital networking through the Internet also increasingly requires transnational methods and strategies in the field of media education, which at the same time take into account the different national actualities."