Dyspraxia is a hidden handicap that affects around 6% of European students. It impacts on 4 major activities in schools: reading, writing, arithmetic and organization. The general awareness of public authorities and educative world is getting better since few years but access to adapted resources, interoperable and connected to the scholarship curriculum, is still a critical need for the concerned individuals.
For this reason, we decided to gather several organizations from the EU in order to create the first large open digital library with the objective to improve the quality of the schooling of the dyspraxic pupils or, in other words, to enhance their access, participation and performance within the education system.
We will focus on pupils between 6 to 15 years old and their responsible teachers. Indeed, it is the age range where dyspraxia is usually detected and the needs become crucial.
DYSPRAXIATHECA targets:
• teachers: educational materials designed by renowned national and international specialists and ready-made adapted lessons done by specialized peers
• pupils: resources adapted to their own level of dyspraxia, thanks innovative digital tools
• relatives: approved, monitored and mandated resources by reputed and trustworthy institutions
The Library has the practical objective to gather at least 700 resources to support for all the stakeholders of the “dyspraxic” education that means:
• a library of 500 adapted eBooks of classic European literature (novels, theatre, poetry…)
• a database of 100 interactive exercises tackling the 4 main topics (reading, writing, arithmetic and organization) and for the 10 scholarship levels targeted.
• 50 practice sheets to explain how to support and integrate a dyspraxic pupil in a classroom
• 50 model lessons for teachers to ease their daily practice and foster a better understanding of the way lessons can be adapted.
The overall OER will be gathered on the platform www.dyspraxiatheca.eu. The tools developed during the program for converting PDF or Word documents into adapted and accessible EPUB will be freely available on the platform after the EU financing. External collaborations with organizations, companies, schools will be initiated during the program, in compliance with the quality charter that will be created.
During the program we aim at reaching directly 3 100 stakeholders… and hopefully much more during and after the EU financing if we consider the fact that we can evaluate approximately 2 millions of dyspraxic pupils in the geographic area of our consortium, with English speakers. The target increases considerably if we add relatives, teachers and therapists…
For that reason, DYSPRAXIATHECA is dedicated to become a portal to be daily used by targeted pupils and teachers and to welcome new resources after the EU financing: from the partners that are all committed in its development and sustainability and from external collaborations with the « contributor status ».
With that project, we aim at strongly involving targeted professionals and stakeholders in gathering them around a common issue, with transversal European needs. It will foster good practices and innovation exchange and provide a global answer to a global issue. DYSPRAXIATHECA intends to bring practical solutions and tools for pupils, teachers and relatives to improve the quality of the schooling of the dyspraxic pupils, raising their rate of success and, in a long-term view, enhancing their access and integration to higher education and labor market, and therefore, boost their self-development.