The research goal of this project was to examine the reading habits of primary school children and develop programs to support literacy and reading at an early age.

As both literacy and lifelong learning are closely related to reading, the LiRe project aspires to bring about positive change in both areas, through coordinated efforts and collaboration in the field of reading promotion at the European level. The Lifelong Readers (LiRe) project aims, (i) to convince stakeholders about the need to devote more time and effort to reading promotion and to place reading for pleasure at the centre of their policies, approaches and practices, (ii) to provide stakeholders with guidance, training, and an array of tools for reading promotion in the primary school, and (ii) to initiate change by implementing reading promotion programmes in all participating countries.

Within the framework of the AlphaEU project , five digital alphabet books were developed in each of the six partner languages, along with accompanying activities.These books and activities were implemented in each of the project partner countries with teachers and parents of children aged 2-6; the results of the implementation were extremely positive and encouraging.

The advancement of mobile devices, smart phones, and tablets has led to an inevitable push to integrate mobile learning across education. In the early childhood sector, the use of mobile learning has been driven by the affordances of tablets and ubiquitous internet access. Within the framework of the AlphaEU project, five digital alphabet books were developed in English, Greek, Romanian, German, Portuguese, and Italian, along with accompanying activities. These books and activities were implemented in each of the project partner countries with teachers and parents of children aged 2-6; the results of the implementation were extremely positive and encouraging.

Innovade completed a large scale research on the reading habits of young children.

On March 2014, the staff in LMETB (Louth and Meath Education and Training Board) held a very interesting training session in their offices in Navan. The topic of the training was Using Science Fiction in the classroom. It was very well received and people were interested in implementing the genre in a number of different subject areas and with a number of different age groups.

CARDET organized the final conference for the project “Are we Reading”, on March 28, 2014. The project was supported by the Research Promotion Foundation, DESMH 2009-2010, which is co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Regional Development Fund.

University of Piteşti (UPIT) from Romania, partner in the consortium of the SciFiEd project, has participated in INTED Conference, 11-12 March 2014, in Valencia, with the paper titled “INCORPORATING SCIENCE FICTION LITERATURE IN TEACHING SCIENCES”.INTED 2014 (International Technology, Education and Development Conference) has welcomed educational experts from all corners of the world under a common aim: to generate thought-provoking ideas for innovative education and to promote international partnerships.