14th May 2018

Explore Europeana educational tools and resources

The main aims of this Module are as follows

• Learn about ready-to-use digital learning resources and tools available for teaching, developed by Europeana and selected partners.
• Continue exploring the learning scenario, step 3.
• Have the opportunity to participate in a TeachMeet where part of the Developer Group will present their Learning Scenarios.

3.1 Ready-to-use resources developed with partners

Transcribathon for Education

The first resource we would like to mention is Transcribathon for education. This is an online collaborative tool designed with the partner Facts & Files, which allows students to transcribe and annotate documents related to the First World War, like diaries, letters, etc.

The possibilities offered by this tool are numerous, as you can choose from a large variety of handwritten texts and primary sources and use these documents in the context of any subject of your choice. This could be, for example, in History (related to WW1 and national/regional history), specific language classes, or in Civic, Social and Political Education programmes.

Transcribathon can be used in a wide variety of educational settings (from secondary to university level) and it allows students to work either in groups or individually. Besides, the tool is available in various languages, which helps students to engage even more fully with their heritage or to use it for language learning.

This is a very fun and powerful tool that can bring history to life, and that will help you engage students with history they don’t find in the textbooks.

Link : https://transcribathon.com/en/education/

The Historiana Platform

Link : https://www.beta.historiana.eu/#/

This is an initiative of the European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO), was founded to bring supplementary pan-European resources (from curated collections to e-learning activities) to history educators and students in secondary education.

More interesting weblinks

• The free iTunes U course and Multi-Touch book World War I: A battle of perspectives with content from Europeana’s unique 1914-1918 collection, for secondary education and lifelong learning. Learners are encouraged to develop their own understanding of events leading to the war.
• The Art Stories FACES app and game for primary education developed by the Italian start-up Art Stories, which uses paintings from the Europeana Collections to encourage kids (5-10 years old) to learn about visual arts while having fun. Help your students to learn the basics of visual art with this tool. Have a look at this video to learn how.
• Animals in the Great War: The eBook Animals in the Great War is a free, bilingual resource for secondary education teachers and students. It was developed by the Associazione culturale Se and is available in Italian and English. The eBook studies the First World War from the standpoint of the animals that took part in it, using openly licensed resources from the Europeana 1914-18 collection.

Here is the link to the padlet with some ideas shared by the educators: there are a lot of interesting activities. I will have to check them and see what I might use. I need more time.

https://padlet.com/eunacademy/j86peszdowsx

The Europeana Education Space

3.2 The Europeana Education space, Part 1

In the Europeana Education space, you can find the complete portfolio of resources, tools and publications of Europeana to help practitioners to bring digital cultural heritage content to education.

Here you can find three main elements which are very relevant for teachers: Apps, Publications and Curated datasets. These three spaces are hosted on Europeana Professional, a platform featuring Europeana resources and services for various professional communities, from educators and researchers to creative industries and cultural heritage experts.

According to the Europeana Impact Insights (2017) publication: “the problem for humanities researchers, teachers and creatives is that they do not always have easy access to trustworthy pan-European cultural heritage content, mainly because of a lack of digitization and copyright issues.” Therefore, the aim of Europana Professional is to create an open, creative and knowledgeable community in which stakeholders can share, improve and disseminate the benefits of cultural heritage.

The Apps

https://pro.europeana.eu/resources/apps

https://pro.europeana.eu/data/sourcera

https://pro.europeana.eu/data/art-up-your-tab

https://pro.europeana.eu/data/vangoyourself

https://padlet.com/eunacademy/djx709afolae Here is the link to the padlet where some educators have shared their searches and ideas

Sourcera is an add-on that can help you search in many of the world's largest and richest archives (including Europeana) for images that are free to reuse. With a single click, you can insert an image with caption, attribution and link to source into a Google document or slide. Take also a look at the original web version of the project, Culture Collage.

https://pro.europeana.eu/data/animals-in-the-great-war

This is an interesting link which I might use when I talk about WWI in my next year's classes.

3.3 The Europeana Education space, Part 2

Europeana is a userfriendly platform and it is provided with a useful guide https://pro.europeana.eu/post/guide-to-using-europeana-in-education

Pubblications

Curated Database

We can find a good selection of sources : the examples presented in the Mooc are just some. We do need to search more carefully online

• High-resolution paintings from the Mauritshuis
• Photographs of Catalan photographer Josep Maria Sagarra
• Art Nouveau plants and ornaments
• Early Japanese photographs
• Birdsongs in Europeana

3.4 Europeana Education applied

Ready-made examples of Learning Scenarios

• History teachers of any age group: On the Historiana platform you find a variety of lesson plans which you can browse not only by themes but also by teaching methods. Choose a teaching method you haven’t tried yet: try drama or roleplay. There are lesson plans with printable worksheets (also suited for classrooms with no computers or Internet access). The advantage of this tool is that you can either use it online or offline.
• History teacher teaching WW1: If you have Macbook yourself and iPads for classroom use, the free iTunesU course and Multi-Touch book World War I: A battle of perspectives is a great starting point. It has plenty of pictures, maps and cartoons, so you can use it even if you teach in another language. NB: The course material is only available in the iTunesU app on iPhone or iPad, and the Multi-Touch book for Mac. You can also combine the iTunesU course with the Transcribathon tool and Animals in the Great War, both of them focusing on World War I.
• Primary teacher (of students between 6 to 11 years old): If you teach Geography or Arts, you can also combine these two subjects to elaborate a lesson through the study of landscape details in painting. As you will see in the scenario Artistic Landscapes, made by Fulvia Piccolo, the students have to search in the Europeana platform in order to create an interactive e-book about landscapes that will be shared between schoolmates. This scenario is recommended for children between 7 and 8 years old. If you want to see Fulvia’s account on how the implementation went, you can find it back in Module 2!
• If you are a middle school Maths/Physics teacher (of students up to 15 years old) who wants to work with density and volumes, you can check out the scenario When in History did wallets weight the most? created by Ryszard Markowicz, one of the 18 Developer Group Teachers. Stay tuned for Module 5, where Ryszard will give an account of how the implementation went for him!
• Or, if you are a high school Physics teacher (of students up to 18 years old) who is teaching sound (frequency and amplitude) to students, you can see how to incorporate sounds in your lessons with the scenario Sounds of Nature made by Rafael Montero, one of the Developer Group teachers.

3.5 The Learning Scenario, Step 3: Learner’s role & learning space

In week 3 we are asked to continue working on our Learning Scenario

TASK

In the previous module, we asked you to start completing your lesson plan by filling in the relevant trends your scenario will follow, the learning objectives, and the skills and competences your students will develop and demonstrate within the scenario (e.g. 21st-Century Skills such as communicative skills, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, etc).

Once you have completed the previous sections, it’s time to think about the next steps to complete your scenario, which in this module are the learner’s role (what sort of activities will the students be involved in?) and the learning space (where will the learning take place, e.g. school classroom, local library, museum, outdoors, an online space?).

Once you have filled in the template with the learner’s role and the learning space, make sure you save the document, as you will continue working on it in the next module.

3.6 The importance of the learning space

Here are some interesting links shared by educators

A Trip to the South Pole http://fcl.eun.org/directory/details?contentId=1101

Introduction to Art History http://fcl.eun.org/directory/details?contentId=1108

Rocks in the Art http://fcl.eun.org/directory/details?contentId=1113

3.7 TeachMeet