The Future of Education

The article is a study of the PreEdTech (Improving the Pedagogical and ICT skills of PreSchool Teachers and Educators in the Digital Era) project, co-funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ Programme, Cooperation partnerships in school education, Ref. no.: 2021-1-RO01-KA220-SCH-000027894. The project aims to provide pre-primary teachers and educators with the necessary means to adapt their activities to the online environment. The project also highlights that parents are pivotal in reaching, communicating with and involving their children in online activities. The project stems from the pandemic context when schools suddenly and unpreparedly turned to online teaching. The project signalled significant discrepancies in the resources and effort placed into online schooling related to the age of children. Thus, whereas children from primary school to high school benefited from resources, time allocated, and teacher implication, kindergarten children in public and, to a lesser extent, private sectors were (and still are) at risk of being left behind. This was largely due to the lack of methodologies, or knowledge about the potential of tools, websites and other software meant to improve preschool children’s online learning experience. There are even stereotypes regarding their online access, often perceived as unsuitable despite the fact that these children are digital natives and their parents usually use the internet and the mobile phone as ‘modern pacifiers’. The PreEdTech project comes with a solution to these problems by providing informative documents, practical approaches and suggesting tools for online teaching. The article presents the objectives, target groups, and main results of the project and gives insights into kindergarten teachers’ feedback on the project Guide.