A school year with Europeana

In June 2019, our editorial campaign A school year with Europeana put a spotlight on how the education community has been integrating digital culture into the classroom over the last academic year. We published four teachers’ interviews as well as two articles about our collaborative projects with European Schoolnet (EUN) and Euroclio.

Here, we recap the most important highlights.

44,000 students reached and more than 1,800 teachers involved

Thanks to our partnership with European Schoolnet, 1,800 teachers of primary and secondary education from 55 different countries have worked with Europeana Collections in the 2018-2019 academic year. They created more than 200 learning scenarios, covering many different curricula subjects, and shared over 50 stories of implementation. All this material is featured on the Teaching with Europeana blog, a new growing resource to encourage educators to share their experience in incorporating Europeana resources in their classroom.

We also offered the Massive Online Open Course Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competencies with digital cultural heritage in three languages: English (rerun), Spanish and Portuguese. Together, they had more than 3,500 participants.

As a result of these activities, we have reached more than 44,000 students in Europe and beyond.

How did this happen? Find out more about this collaboration.

Promoting multi perspective in history education with source collections

EUROCLIO and Europeana have been working together to give history educators access to sets of source material from Europeana Collections that are transnational and multiperspective. This year we have produced 12 new sources collections and its 12 respective learning activities, all published on the Historiana platform, providing educators with more ready-made thematic compilations on topics that are commonly taught across Europe.

Finding and matching these sources requires considerable effort. That is why we aim for the next academic year to join forces with the cultural heritage institutions. We will invite them to share their knowledge of history and of the items in their collections and contribute to the development of these materials for educators and students. Would you like to find out how? Read Euroclio's article.

Lesson learnt from our teachers

We also interviewed some of the teachers involved in the above-mentioned initiatives:

Bridget Martin, a history teacher in residence at EUROCLIO
Teresita Gravina, a Europeana teacher ambassador
Ryszard Marcowicz, a Europeana user group teacher
Ivana Štiglec, a Europeana MOOC moderator

And they told us that:

Teachers are keen to use digital cultural heritage but they need guidance
We can help teachers by creating source collections ready to use
Having access to good quality content means we can create great resources and train teachers on how to use them
Collaborating with other European teachers enriches other teachers’ professional perspective
As soon teachers find out about Europeana, they recognise its relevance and want to use it
Europeana Collections is easy to use - even not-so-digital teachers can be involved
Cultural heritage can be applied to any subject, even maths
The Teaching with Europeana blog is an ideal platform for teachers to discover new learning scenarios, share their experience and get feedback
The possibilities for using cultural material in education are endless - the limit is your own imagination
The Europeana in your classroom MOOC helps to understand copyright issues
The Europeana in your classroom MOOC helps teachers to be more confident in using digital culture
The greatest obstacle for teachers accessing digital cultural heritage is language

Resources produced

Educators and teachers in formal and informal education across Europe can enjoy all these resources:

Teaching with Europeana blog
Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage MOOC:

23 webinars in 12 national languages available on YouTube
Historiana Teacher Training Guide 2019
12 new Historiana Source Collections and its 12 eLearning Activities