Maria Drabczyk
Head of policy and advocacy, Board member , Centrum Cyfrowe
TuEuropeana EduLab: Archives Inspire… and Teach
The Poznań EduLab invited educators to create new interactive teaching activities based on technology and archival content.
A two-day workshop devoted to the use of digital archival resources (from Europeana Collections and some Polish online repositories) in interactive educational activities was held on 24-25 November 2017 at the PSNC EduLab in Poznań, Poland. As part of the workshop, a number of digital and analogue tools were used to test existing narratives and create new ones based on archival materials.
The workshop involved teachers and educators teaching 10 to 14 year olds humanities. They were invited to take part in two thematic paths. These were:
Virtual field game - in which the teachers' task was to design, using pre-selected archives, a virtual field game depicting a literary period, the life of a famous individual, etc. Working with digitised maps, text extracts and photographs integrated with openly-licensed tools and enriched by written texts and clues, the participants prepared a number of interdisciplinary tasks encouraging the player to explore the world and reach the final destination.
Escape room - the task here was to first experience an earlier prepared game and then create a new one in which players solve a series of puzzles and riddles using clues to complete a list of objectives and learn in a truly engaging way about a certain topic. Using QR codes, augmented reality, virtual crosswords, etc. and mixing them up with archival materials, the participants learned how to present an educational topic to their students in an engaging and innovative way.
One of the Escape Room tasks reusing archival material. Maja Drabczyk, National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute, CC BY-SA
As a result of the workshop, multimedia training materials were created (in Polish) to further support and promote independent implementation of scenarios of educational activities used during the workshops by teachers. The users will get to know or deepen their knowledge about selected writers, painters, musicians, inventors/scientists from above historical period, use modern technologies, get acquainted with the possibilities offered by applications supporting learning processes and last but not least they will get acquainted with archival sources - texts, images, music recordings, etc., absorbed from digital repositories and used in the tasks.
In the Guardians of the Medallion (Strażnicy Medalionu) virtual field game the participants will have to unravel the mystery of the loss of a valuable medallion, searched by its guardians - ie. outstanding figures from the 19th century - Charles Dickens, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, etc. Together with them, players will go on a virtual journey around Europe during which they will encounter various tasks built around archival materials, including Richard Wagner’s portrait and music score.
In the Escape Room the players will try to solve a mystery of a lost cup at a tea party gathering key Polish personalities from the 1920s and 1930s period. By solving a crossword based on archival images, finding an answer to a riddle in a set of archival newspapers, recognizing a person in a video dating to 1930s they will uncover the list of all the guests and find the missing one.