Living Book—Augmenting Reading for Life, a three-year EU-funded Erasmus + project (September 2016–August 2019), exploited the affordances of augmented reality (AR) and other emerging technologies in order to address the underachievement of European youth in reading skills. The program developed an innovative approach that empowers teachers from upper primary and lower secondary schools (ages 9–15) to ‘augment’ students’ reading experiences through combining offline activities promoting reading literacy with online experiences of books’ ‘virtual augmentation’ and with social dynamics. Various professional learning activities were designed within the project, aimed at strengthening European teachers’ profile and competences in effectively integrating the Living Book approach into their classroom activities, and in dealing with diversified groups of learners, particularly pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Teachers also received training in how to involve parents, and particularly those from disadvantaged and/or migrant backgrounds, in proreading activities to back the overall Living Book strategy at home. The current article provides an overview of the main phases of the Living Book project implementation, and of the program’s key activities and outputs. It also outlines the content and structure of the ‘Augmented Teacher’ and ‘Augmented Parent-Trainer’ training courses developed within the project. Finally, it reports on the main insights gained from the pilot testing of the courses and the follow-up classroom experimentation that took place in the project partner countries.

The case study took place in a primary school in Cyprus (student ages 6-12), which implemented a two-year multifaceted professional development program aimed at the effective integration of tablet technologies within the mathematics curriculum. The program adopted a systemic, school-based and collaborative model of professional development that focused on the broad preparation and ongoing engagement of all key stakeholders. This article focuses on research conducted during the first year of the program implementation. It portrays the initial state of mobile device use in the case study school ecosystem, describes the process of tablet integration within the school setting, and interrogates the self-reported reflections of a core team of six (n=6) teachers in the school regarding their professional learning experiences as a result of participating in the program. Findings suggest that the model of professional development adopted by the program effectively contributed to the integration of mobile devices into the school setting and to teacher professional learning.

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