Lifelong Readers 2.0

Lifelong Readers 2.0 if the official app of the European-funded Erasmus+ project Lifelong Readers 2.0 (LiRe2.0). The project is led by a consortium of 7 partners from 6 countries and aspires to contribute to the effort of creating European schools, universities, and professional environments that are populated by millions of lifelong readers. A lifelong learner is first and foremost a lifelong reader. A lifelong reader is self-motivated, finds value and pleasure in reading, and thus reads, learns, and evolves throughout her/his lifetime. The LiRe2.0 project dispels the widespread notion (especially among parents and educators) that technology is the enemy of reading. In fact, it is based on the opposite assumption: Innovative use of ICT-based, open educational practices and resources that link up informal, non-formal, and formal reading/learning, can play a significant role in enhancing people’s reading attitudes, reading engagement, and reading skills; especially in the case of disengaged or reluctant readers and marginalized learners.

The project aims to address low achievement in basic skills through more effective teaching methods and develop basic and transversal skills by using innovative methods in order to inspire, guide, and facilitate the creation of reading cultures and communities among pre-teens and teenagers, university students, and working adults, through the use of Web 2.0 technologies and other forms of digital/social reading.

The Lifelong Readers 2.0 app has been designed based on the expectations described above and allows users to have access to the major outputs of the LiRe2.0 project. Through the app, students, teachers, librarians, lifelong learners, and readers interested in the aforementioned themes, can learn more about the project, and they can also have access to professional development material and resources related to successful reading promotion. More specifically, users can find description of European successful reading promotion programs, projects, and initiatives, as well as guidelines and strategies for promoting reading and creating a reading culture at school and at home. Users also have access to research that has been conducted through the project at European level, with a theoretical and a practical components on the promotion of reading through the use of innovative technologies, and the can also read news related to the project. Finally, and more importantly, users have access to the LiRe2.0 Toolkit and the LiRe2.0 professional development modules, that compose the most important outcomes of the project, and which aim at helping educators and everyone interested in the objectives of the project to actually promote reading through the use of Web 2.0 tools in their classroom, school, library, home, or their own personal environment.