Reducing Early School Leaving by Increasing Academic Achievement with Digital Applications in Storytelling Techniques

Learning Disabilities have emerged as an important issue in the field of educational sciences since the 1960s.Although the child is of normal and gifted intelligence, not being able to show the expected academic skills; In particular, it has been considered as the criteria such as causing difficulties in reading,writing and arithmetic in the cognitive processes of the brain, and difficulties in perception-motor abilities in general.The new methods aimed at eliminating learning difficulties tried to be put forward with these scales could not completely eliminate the problems in the field.It is thought that our project will contribute to the permanence of the learned subjects by using the educational and concretizing aspect of the stories on the subjects that the students in the learning age have learning difficulties, and to contribute to the comprehension of the subjects that are difficult to learn by making use of the stimulating and interesting aspects of the digital elements. In line with these needs, our project aims to meet the cognitive needs of our students by producing solutions to their learning problems, with the trainings to be given to the instructors on the subjects that our students have learning difficulties.

The objectives of the project were as follows: -To make the educational environment more attractive for students with learning disabilities. -To reduce the dropout rates of students with learning disabilities. -To contribute to the increase in the professional development of teachers with new tools and methods. -To contribute to the development of the professional capacities of teachers through the online learning platform. -To increase the capacity of educational institutions. -To ensure the active use of the "Recommendation Program", which also includes the Digital Storytelling curriculum.

Our project included 5 work packages and the activities in these work packages. Our work packages under general headings were as follows; WP1: Project Management WP2: "Digital Storytelling Techniques " Training Programme A1. Preparing the learning modules A2.Preparing a storytelling guide for teachers A3. Trainers trainings and pilot trainings A4/A5/A6/A7. Pilot implementation of modules with users in partners' countries WP3: Online interactive learning/teaching platform A1. Building the platform A2/A3/A4/A5 Pilot implementation of platform in partners' countries WP4 : "Recommendation Programme" to promote digital story telling techniques A1: Preparing the programme A2/A3/A4/A5. Small Scale Meetings and Workshopswith Policy Makers in partners' countries WP5 : Evaluation Programme (Conferences and Workshops) A1- Planning Meeting A2- Progress Meeting A3- Evaluation Meeting A4/A5/A6/A7- Final Conferences in partners' countries A8- Final Meeting

Tangible Outputs / Products: -Teacher Training Book (10 modules) -Student Training Book (10 modules) -Online Learning Platform (1) -Recommendation Program (1) -Trainer training work plan and report -Pilot training work plan and report -Platform testing work plan and report -Small-scale meetings work plan and report -Final conferences work plan and report -Transnational meetings evaluation report, -Quality monitoring and evaluation report -Dissemination plan and report -Sustainability work plan and report Other results of the project: Reduction in dropout rates of students with learning difficulties Increased professional development of teachers with new tools and methods Active use of the “Recommendation Program” including the Digital Storytelling curriculum Development of professional capacity of teachers through the online learning platform Increased capacity of educational institutions