My Story Map: how to tell a life story
The project "My Story Map" has two main objectives:
- To motivate youngsters who have dropped out of education to re-enter their learning pathway.
- To avoid early-school withdrawal of students at risk of dropping out.
The project started with desk research that focused on two key areas:
1. the current situation regarding prevention of, intervention against, and compensation of early drop-out from education and training in the countries participating in the project (FR, AT, BE, IT, ES) and at European level (progress made within the strategic framework Education and Training 2020)
2. a synthesis of the present state of research on the impact of story-telling and digital mapping on diverse target groups
Special emphasis was placed on conclusions and recommendations for the development of the project’s educational outputs. These outcomes form the basis of the learning modules aimed at engaging directly early-school leavers in an educational action as ""digital peer educators"" by implementing digital storytelling and digital mapping with young people, who will produce their life stories through digital maps.
The resulting digital products will be organized, enriched with extra related content (such as video, photos, audio messages, etc.) and showcased in an online exhibition, which will be part of a communication campaign (StarWall) aimed at using social networks as a means of dissemination of educational messages.
Luc Zwartjes vice-President of EUROGEO, Ghent University (Belgium)