OLA is a two-year European Erasmus+ project (2021-2023) coordinated by CNR-IRPPS which, following the crisis situation generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, aims to provide greater momentum to so-called “open educational resources” and “open educational practices” as opportunities to reduce the “digital divide” within the European educational context, for more inclusive teaching.

Open educational resources – understood as free digital teaching resources, developed collaboratively by networks of teachers and various social actors – are already a reality, which however remains fragmented, not widely disseminated, and insufficiently valued at the institutional level. The OLA project aims to promote their development and sharing through: the production of MOOC courses for teachers; the creation of guidelines on open educational resources for teachers and publishing houses; the participatory creation of an interactive open-access online platform that can be used by teachers to develop and disseminate multimedia educational scenarios.

Within the framework of the project, 80 interdisciplinary scenarios on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) topics will be developed, 50 of which will be tested in the 5 European countries involved: Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Romania, and Spain.

A central, cross-cutting theme of the project is the focus on recognizing stereotypes – gender-related, but not only – and values implicitly conveyed by textbooks and online multimedia resources, with the aim of promoting a revision of the concept of “digital skills” to include, beyond purely technological skills, the critical and responsible use of platforms and online information sources as a prerequisite for the exercise of informed citizenship.

OLA, together with the other European projects INCLUDE and GSO4SCHOOL, is a promoter of the Officine Educazione Futuri