The AlphaEU project aims to promote the acquisition of multilingual awareness and language skills of pre-schoolers in various European countries, by developing, piloting, and implementing digital alphabet books and alphabet-related games and interactive activities. Targeted alphabets/languages include: English, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. Bringing very young children into contact with foreign languages may result in faster language learning, improved mother tongue skills, and better performance in other areas.

The research goal of this project was to examine the reading habits of primary school children and develop programs to support literacy and reading at an early age.

The SciFiEd project focuses on providing teachers with tools, training, and guidance that will assist them in enhancing their teaching, making science more attractive to students, connecting it with real-life issues such as the environment, and providing girls and other marginalised groups access to science. The central project idea is to achieve this by incorporating Science Fiction in science teaching.

Within the framework of the AlphaEU project , five digital alphabet books were developed in each of the six partner languages, along with accompanying activities.These books and activities were implemented in each of the project partner countries with teachers and parents of children aged 2-6; the results of the implementation were extremely positive and encouraging.

The advancement of mobile devices, smart phones, and tablets has led to an inevitable push to integrate mobile learning across education. In the early childhood sector, the use of mobile learning has been driven by the affordances of tablets and ubiquitous internet access. Within the framework of the AlphaEU project, five digital alphabet books were developed in English, Greek, Romanian, German, Portuguese, and Italian, along with accompanying activities. These books and activities were implemented in each of the project partner countries with teachers and parents of children aged 2-6; the results of the implementation were extremely positive and encouraging.

In the framework of the AlphaEU project, an adult mediators’ blended training programme developed by the project consortium was completed in all the partner countries. The training consisted of two face-to-face meetings and a series of online activities that needed to be completed by the participants.

CARDET organized the final conference for the project “Are we Reading”, on March 28, 2014. The project was supported by the Research Promotion Foundation, DESMH 2009-2010, which is co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Regional Development Fund.

On March 2014, the staff in LMETB (Louth and Meath Education and Training Board) held a very interesting training session in their offices in Navan. The topic of the training was Using Science Fiction in the classroom. It was very well received and people were interested in implementing the genre in a number of different subject areas and with a number of different age groups.