Transforming education in the rural context is one of the concerns raised by UNESCO (2010), as socio-educational inequalities are still pervasive in the rural areas across Europe (European Commission, 2011). In line with the EU 2020 Strategy, the European Network for Rural Development (ERND) has established a plan for rural development, which includes among its priorities to promote social inclusion, reduce poverty and promote economic development. Particularly, one of the main intervention areas to achieve this goal refers to the accessibility, use and quality of ICT in rural areas. Nevertheless, only introducing the use of ICT in schools seems not be enough to improve educational attainment and school development. The latest report from the OECD (2015) confirms that there has been no significant improvement in reading, math or science scores in those countries that have heavily invested in ICT for education. Research focused on how to use technology as an effective educational tool (Warwick, Hennessy & Mercer, 2011) highlighted the key importance of promoting higher-level interactions take into account between teacher-student when using ICT in the classrooms. These dialogic / interactive pedagogies may create optimal conditions for an effective use of technology which may have a positive impact on transforming education in the rural areas through ICT. Our paper focuses on studying a particular dialogic use of ICT through family and community participation in the classrooms and other learning spaces in rural school in Northeastern Spain. We examined the link between these particular types of family and community involvement using ICT and the improvement on students’ attainment. A case study was conducted using the communicative methodology (Gomez, Puigvert & Flecha, 2011) which has acted as a ‘footprint’ in the rural area of this school (Kvalsund & Hargreaves, 2014). Data collection included 7 semi-structured interviews (4 teachers and 3 family members), 2 groups of communicative group discussion (1 with students and 1 with family and other community members) and 4 daily life stories (students). Our analysis includes exclusionary and transformative dimensions for an effective use of ICT as an educational tool that can be achieved through dialogue and interaction beyond the established pattern of teacher-student. Significance of these results is consistent with previous contributions that showed intergenerational dialogue between families, communities and schools as an essential part of the rural world (Semke & Sheridan, 2012).

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