Education Community Work Plan 2022

The Europeana Education Community brings together all those who believe that Europe’s digital cultural heritage has an important role to play in education, and want to work to embed digital cultural data in both formal and non-formal education to foster innovation.

Read and download the full Education Community work plan below. You can also join the Europeana Education Community. 

Executive summary

In 2022, the Europeana Education Community will follow up with its regular activities to strengthen the connection between cultural heritage and educational sectors, taking into account also the European Year of Youth and the multiple non-formal educational initiatives that interest this sector. To get a deeper understanding of the needs of educators in regards to the use of digital cultural heritage, the community will share information and best practices, facilitate collaborations at the intersection of cultural heritage institutions and education, promote the Europeana Initiative at events and engage with new members. 

The Steering Group's main activities will be around the approval, supervision and results’ validation of the Newspaper Task Force, the organisation of an annual event in the form of a Hackathon, the continuation of our collaboration with the Europeana Copyright community and the increase of our outreach efforts, either connecting professionals for the development of projects or exploring synergies with new educational networks.    

Steering Group composition

This Community is governed by a chair, two co-chairs and a manager (from the Europeana Foundation).

• Chair
  • Altheo Valentini, European Grants International Academy, Italy
• Co-chairs 
  • Loa Kristjánsdóttir, EuroClio, Iceland
  • Margherita Sani, Project manager, Institute for Cultural Heritage Region Emilia Romagna, Italy
• Manager
  • Isabel Crespo, Business Development Coordinator Education, Europeana Foundation, Netherlands
• Other Steering Group members:
  • Dr. Ping Kong, Heritage & Education GmbH, Germany
  • Marco Streefkerk, Information manager, Anne Frank Museum, Netherlands
  • Ilona Kish, Director Public Libraries 2030, Belgium

Vision statement

This community brings together all those who believe that Europe’s digital cultural heritage has an important role to play in education, and want to work to embed digital cultural data in both formal and non-formal education to foster innovation.

This Community strengthens the connection between cultural heritage and educational sectors to mutual benefit. More specifically, it works towards the following goals:

• Get a deeper understanding of the needs of educators where it concerns their use of digital cultural heritage;

• Reach out to cultural heritage professionals working in education to support them in their digital journey;

• Mainstream the use of digital culture in education through European educational and cultural heritage networks, currently collaborating with us such as EuroCLIO, European Schoolnet, ALL DIGITAL, EPALE, NEMO, Photoconsortium, Public Libraries 2030, ICOM-CECA and the Water Museums Global Network.

Its members: 

• Share information and best practices;

• Jointly work on issues of common interest;

• Facilitate collaborations at the intersection of cultural heritage and education;

• Explore collaboration with aggregators for national outreach;

• Promote the initiative in events and engage with new potential members. 

*1,918 members (baseline December 2021)

Terms of reference

• Anyone who is a member of the Europeana Network Association can join the Europeana Education Community.

• Anyone else can join (but needs to sign up to the ENA). The Europeana Network Association is free and easy to join.

Main activities in 2022

• Run a Task Force on how to improve the use of digitised newspapers for education; 

• Organise a community event in the form of a Hackfest, if possible in the context of the EU DigiEduhack 2022, combining teams with educational and cultural heritage professionals;  

• Promote Europeana resources and activities for education (e.g. Europeana Classroom, the four different language versions of the Digital with Cultural Heritage MOOC 2022, Historiana training opportunities for educators and cultural heritage institutions etc.) in the network through events and face to face conversations;

• Follow up the collaboration with the Copyright community (initiated in 2021) by participating in one of the Copyright Office Hours dedicated to educators. The Education Community will also invite experts of the Copyright community to participate in the Europeana Education MOOC webinars 2022 (English, Greek, Croatian and Italian versions);

• Organise a matchmaking event for community members to meet potential partners to collaborate in European projects related to cultural heritage and education;

• Write articles for Europeana Pro  about best practices and case studies (or invite other experts to do so);

• Post and share best practices in the Europeana Education channels: Facebook group, LinkedIn group and mailing list;

• Approach a youth association (e.g. ESACH) to understand young people‘s requirements to use digital culture heritage in education and/or a network in HE (e.g. EADTU).

Communication Channels 

• LinkedIn group
• Facebook Group 
• Basecamp group (only for the steering group)
• Mailing list for community updates and specific calls to action

Community Pro page 

The community page will be updated in a consistent way with the other communities’ pages. It will feature a short community introduction, the current community board as well as the latest news posts related to educational use of digital cultural data.

Community engagement - regular activities

• Community growth and  profiling

  • Identify potential community members within ENA and/or outside the network (e.g. through members’ local communities); 

  • Identify and better understand the motivations and needs of the community members;

  • Every year link to at least one major network (in 2020 we established collaboration with NEMO, in 2021 with ICOM-CECA and PL 2030).

• Outreach

  • Collect and showcase case studies of reuse of digital cultural data in education provided by the community members;

  • Facilitate connections between Europeana and educational players and stakeholders as well as between community members;

  • Invite educational and cultural heritage professionals to workshops and / or webinars to encourage the two groups to learn from and about each other; 

  • Collaborate and follow-up with other ENA communities to explore crossover activities or actions in regards to education.

• Advocacy and awareness raising

  • Advocate for improvement of the cultural heritage data for educational purposes; 

  • Present community developments and achievements at the Europeana annual conference and other relevant forums;

  • Support Task Forces and participation in Working Groups.

• Admin & Operational 

  • Regular online meetings with the steering group

  • Moderation of the mailing list and other educational channels 

  • Bimonthly report to the MB 

  • Annual report and Working plan (at the end of the year)

Changes

(Overall: a growing and active community)

• Gainmore understanding of the needs of educators with regard to reuse of digital cultural data;

• Upscale the digital skills of educations through the use of existing Europeana tools that can enhance teaching with digital sources in the classroom or the cultural heritage institutions’ online; educational activities (Europeana Classroom, Teaching with Europeana blog)

• Support a better awareness of the value of digital cultural data in education - showcase examples on how Europeana can complement existing schoolbook content and curricula (e.g. Historiana);

• For cultural heritage professionals within the community: advocate internally to make cultural heritage content available for educational purposes (i.e. licensing conditions) and showcase best practices

Performance indicators

• Community growth: Minimum 20% increase of ENA Education community members in 2022

• Outreach: Organisation of one learning event for community members

• Liaison with a Europe-wide educational network 

• Advocacy: Task Force on Newspapers completed and recommendations published

• Admin: Regular SG meetings, periodic reports to the MBs, Annual report and Working Plan

Budget*

*Budget pending final approval