Europeana: transform Education with Digital Culture

30th April 2018

The Mooc has just begun. I am a bit late but I am willing to work online and learn about Europeana.

Here are the main aims of the Mooc- from the course main webpage:

The Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage MOOC aims at improving the teacher’s understanding of Cultural Heritage in order to efficiently integrate cultural heritage into their lessons and practices, regardless of the subject they usually teach.

In this MOOC, participants will:

• Understand why it is important to integrate European cultural heritage in education
• Learn how to use Europeana Collections to teach their subjects
• Learn how to navigate the Europeana Collections website
• Explore and become familiarized with the various Europeana apps, tools and materials
• Learn how to build learning activities using Europeana Collections resources

The MOOC will introduce participants to the Europeana platform, where they will find different resources for educators such as pictures, videos, texts and various tools that they can easily integrate in their lessons. Moreover, the MOOC will help teachers to build learning scenarios using digital cultural heritage, in a framework of 21st century skills.

Additionally, it will offer a selection of tested classroom activities and resources from different European countries to empower primary and secondary teachers in introducing cultural heritage in the classroom and help them reflect on their own practices.

I have also joined the Facebook group or on Twitter using the hashtag #EuropeanaMOOC!

MODULE 1 Transform Education with Digital Culture

Main aims of this Module

1. Discuss and explore what cultural heritage is, and its importance (including the 2018 European Year of cultural heritage)
2. Become familiar with the Europeana platform, and its work in education
3. Explore the first part of the learning scenario

1.1. What is cultural heritage?

"Cultural heritage shapes our identities and everyday lives. It surrounds us in Europe's towns and cities, natural landscapes and archaeological sites. It is not only found in literature, art and objects, but also in the crafts we learn from our ancestors, the stories we tell our children, the food we enjoy in company and the films we watch and recognise ourselves in.

Official statistics also suggest that the preservation of heritage is vital: more than eight in ten European citizens think cultural heritage is important to them personally, and eight in ten citizens think cultural heritage is important for the European Union. The same proportion agrees that Europe's cultural heritage and related activities create jobs in the EU (79%) (Special Eurobarometer 466 (2017) on Cultural Heritage).

According to the Council of Europe (2005), “cultural heritage is a group of resources inherited from the past which people identify, independently of ownership, as a reflection and expression of their constantly evolving values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions. It includes all aspects of the environment resulting from the interaction between people and places through time.”

I feel that Europe has roots in its past and since there are over 28 countries which are in the Union we can rely on a lot of documents and beautiful archeological sites which remind us of our past history. Europeana is a great collection which is worth checking.

Types of Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage is a complex system, often based on values and emotions rather than objects. Therefore, it can be broken down to further categories.

• Tangible, or physical cultural heritage includes objects, buildings and works of art. These are further divided into movable and immovable cultural heritage. Immovable heritage consists of buildings and monuments, which themselves can contain works of art, such as frescos, carvings, stained glass windows or organs. Movable heritage includes – amongst others – books, documents and clothing.
• Intangible cultural heritage consists of non-physical aspects of culture, such as social customs at a particular time in history, social values, spiritual beliefs, etc. Tangible cultural heritage (physical objects) can always be interpreted alongside intangible cultural heritage (political, philosophical, social or spiritual values at a certain point in history). Intangible cultural heritage is more difficult to preserve.
• Digital cultural heritage can be defined as embracing “cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources” (The Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage of UNESCO).
• Natural heritage is also an important part of a society's heritage, including the countryside and natural environment or natural reserves.

Thinking about the idea of Cultural Heritage

Sharing ideas onlin and what I think

1.2 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage

2018 is the European Year of Cultural Heritage. The aim of this year is to encourage people to explore the richness of Europe´s cultural heritage, to celebrate its diversity (at EU, national, regional and local level), and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space.

This year, a series of initiatives and events will take place across Europe in order to enable people to become closer to – and more involved with – their cultural heritage. Throughout 2018, 7840 events will take place in a total of 28 countries, with 1,120,000 participants from all around Europe, celebrating the continent’s diverse cultural heritage which helps to shape our identities and everyday lives.

Each European Member State has appointed a National Coordinator to implement the year and coordinate events and projects at local, regional and national level. National Coordinators are for example responsible for granting the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 label. The label – containing a logo, a slogan and a hashtag - is available for projects, events and activities taking place between 7 December 2017 and 31 December 2018. The label is for initiatives that contribute to achieving one or more of the objectives of the 2018 European Year of Cultural Heritage.

Everyone is invited to join the thousands of activities taking place across Europe to tie people more closely to their cultural heritage. If you want to find out about or join any of the activities taking place across Europe to celebrate cultural heritage, click here. Besides, you can find various resources such as factsheets and different toolkits at your disposal, in case you are interested in promoting the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018. Finally, make sure you stay tuned about the latest activities happening in Europe during the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 by following this link.

You can find more information here.

1.3 Cultural Heritage in Education

Why Cultural Heritage in education?

It is “an ideal way of giving meaning to the future by providing a better understanding of the past” (Textes adoptés par le Comité des Ministres du Conseil de l'Europe, 1998).

In the article ICT and Cultural Heritage Education: Which Added Value?, researchers argue that “a huge and fast increasing number of cultural heritage artefacts have become digital: this has a significant effect on cultural heritage education, both because the number of objects available is incredibly enlarged and because each single artefact can be regarded and studied from many different perspectives” (Ott & Pozzi, 2008). However, it can also be argued that ICT is still overwhelmingly used for maintaining cultural heritage artefacts rather than learning about them.

For these reasons, cultural heritage coupled with ICT is increasingly seen by teachers and educators as an essential tool in their daily classes that can be better exploited. We asked European teachers what they think about cultural heritage in the European context.

I belong to a generation of educators who has studied a lot of subjects at school, unlike some students I am teaching and I have taught I have been involved in learning subjects related to Europe and its culture. I have studied Art, Philosophy, History of Art, History and a lot of Literature in English, German and French.

Learning about Cultural Heritage is crucial to know the world and meet new cultures.

1.4 Introduction to Europeana

Europeana is Europe's digital cultural heritage platform. It currently provides access to over 50 million digitised items from more than 3700 European libraries, museums, archives and galleries. This huge database represents a great media, thematic and language variety – you can find images/text/audio/video/3D content on art, architecture, maps, films, natural history, fashion and more in over 30 languages. A big part of this content – over 20 million items – is openly licensed and can be freely reused in various work and learning projects.

You can easily search Europeana via key words or by colour, people, time period, and topics, or explore curated resources, ranging from virtual exhibitions and galleries to thematic collections on World War I, Art, Music, Fashion, Photography or Migration, with two new collections coming in 2018, Newspaper and Manuscripts.

The mission of Europeana is to transform the world with culture, unlock cultural heritage treasures and make them available online for everybody to enjoy, work or educate with.

I have already used this platform but I need to learn more about it. It is a new world to me! I am going to explore the collections.

Europeana Education is an online space and an initiative to bring Europe’s digital cultural heritage closer to education.

Cultural heritage has a crucial role to play in education. Although educational curricula and national priorities differ, at the core of our educational systems we all want to make the most interesting and inspiring content available for students and lifelong learners. Europeana’s digitised collection of cultural heritage can provide multiple perspectives on historical, political, economic, cultural and human developments across Europe and beyond.

Europeana Education supports teaching and learning with innovative tools and resources like virtual learning environments (Historiana), eBooks (World War I: A battle of perspectives) or apps and games (Art Stories FACES). Some of the best examples for tools also include a Guide to using Europeana, which gives search tips and information on copyright and crediting, and Transcribathon, an online collaborative tool that allows students to transcribe World War I original documents such as diaries or letters and engage more fully with their past.

In the video interview, Milena Popova, Business Development Manager of the Europeana Foundation talks about Europeana’s role in education and how teachers and student can benefit from it.