EDELWEISS

The Issues

The major aims of Edelweiss project were the following:

• enable long-term hospitalized children and young people to keep in touch with both school and society in general, through the use of ICT;
• help them feel a sense of belonging to an operative group, start new and rewarding relations, allow their participation in collaborative activities that make them feel active and vital;
• awaken their mates to attention and solidarity towards their unlucky school mates;
• explore the use of educational software as a further support to hospital and homebound education.

The outcomes

• A methodological approach to the learning design of ICT-based acitvities to be used for long-term in-patients.
• A library of possible individual and collaborative activities based on the use of online and multimedia resources.
• An online platform prototype to support young long-term in-patients to be used by teachers in their classroom activity.
• The design and implementation of communities of practice to short-circuit hospital teachers with their peers in schools willing to involve their students in online learning collaboration activities.