Lifelong Readers 2.0

Innovade in collaboration with LMETB from Ireland and partners from Portugal, Greece, Italia and Romania have been awarded the project Lifelong Readers 2.0, under the ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnerships programme of the European Commission.

The EU High Level Group of Experts on Literacy paints the complete picture: "An estimated 20% of adults lack the literacy skills they need to function fully in a modern society. An estimated 73 million European adults lack qualifications above upper secondary school level, many because their poor literacy makes educational progress impossible. The latest results from PISA, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, show that one in five EU 15-year-olds had poor reading skills. Even as literacy becomes more necessary, reading levels have stagnated." These numbers reflect the grim picture of literacy in Europe, which of course needs to be reversed, if the EU is to achieve its ambitious educational, social, political, and economical goals. LiRe2.0—much like its precursor project LiRe—asserts that the most effective way in improving one’s  reading skills is reading for pleasure: reading that we choose to do of our own free will, anticipating the satisfaction that we will get from the act of reading.

The project’s specific objectives are:

• To combat low levels of literacy and engage at-risk students in reading and academic learning.
• To provide innovative pedagogical methods, best practice guidelines, and strategies towards systemic use of ICT for reading promotion.
• To empower all stakeholders to use innovative ICT-based educational practices and resources in enhancing people’s reading attitudes, reading engagement, and reading skills.
• To inspire, guide, and facilitate the creation of reading cultures, communities through the use of Web 2.0 technologies.
• To implement ways in which technology can encourage reading for pleasure and engagement in various settings, and for diverse readers.