As new techno-literacy practices become more deeply embedded in society, they impact on ever younger age groups. What we have come to call ‘new technologies’, changing everyday literacy practices, have inevitable implications for young children. Thus, one of the most important tasks facing education today is to equip young children for a digitally connected future. This task forces us, as educators, to imagine new ways to support children’s early literacy development. Against this background, digital storytelling, a new twist to storytelling, may be the key to a first realization of such a task. It uses new technologies to create a narrative and, therefore, is the modern expression of an ancient art.

STORIES, leveraging digital storytelling, aims to improve the quality of early childhood education and care through using an engaging didactical approach to support the development of twenty-first century literacies. STORIES follows a holistic approach to implement digital storytelling in early childhood education and care. It focuses on activities that support educators with professional training and guidelines enabling them to develop, implement and evaluate learning scenarios based on digital storytelling.

As STORIES seeks to promote the quality of early childhood education and care in international educational contexts, the project partnership is composed of six partners in four countries: University of Jyväskylä (Finland), University of Education Karlsruhe (Germany), Computer Learning (Italy), Coopselios (Italy), University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Turkey). The project will be disseminated in all of the project partners’ countries and will be evaluated within the research projects.