Designing learning scenarios with the Europeana Teacher Developer Group

The group has been set up and coordinated by the European Schoolnet (EUN) as part of our DSI3 project and consists of representatives from six countries (France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Finland), with two secondary and one primary teacher per country.

The Europeana Teacher Developer Group will create learning activities with digital cultural content in three workshops between October 2017 and March 2018. The workshop outcomes will serve as a basis for a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to be published in early summer 2018 with the aim to help teachers use digitized cultural heritage material in their classrooms.

Day 1: Warming up the engines

Our workshop took place at the same time with the meeting of the Scientix project, giving us the opportunity to expand our reach to educators and explore possible reuse of cultural heritage in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) education. The morning of 28 October started with a presentation of Europeana and our educational resources to both project teacher groups (Europeana DSI3 and Scientix), followed by a discussion.

Participants in the European DSI3 and Scientix workshops. European Schoolnet, all rights reserved.

In the afternoon, the participants split in two groups depending on the project they were working on. The 27 Scientix teachers learned about organizing events, presenting more effectively, social media, and STEM skills for the future.

The 18 Europeana participants got a more detailed introduction into the Europeana resources for educators. In particular, the teachers learned how to improve their searches in Europeana Collections and use the thematic collections, galleries and exhibitions. The workshop also presented them the variety of digital learning resources available on Europeana Professionals (Historiana, LRE, Inventing Europe, Art Faces, among others) as well as with the guidelines for using openly licensed content.

Europeana DSI3 workshop. European Schoolnet, all rights reserved.

Day 2: Full steam ahead

During the second day, we worked together with the teachers on shaping up their concepts for learning activities and pedagogical scenarios with Europeana content. These resources will be trialled in their classrooms, refined and then become part of the above mentioned Europeana MOOC. We ended the day with a little artistic endeavour - take a look at some of our best Van Go Yourself recreations and other pictures of the event.

What’s next?

The two-day event was a great opportunity for Europeana to find out what teachers had to say about our educational offering. We received good feedback and excellent suggestions, all of which we will consider carefully. Most of the teachers were pleasantly surprised by the discovery of Europeana content and the various possibilities for sharing the cultural treasures with their students. Some participants were very excited about linking cultural heritage content and science for educational purposes.

#Europeana resources - I am just discovering. #SPW16 @scientix_eu @eu_schoolnet
Find something interesting for you! pic.twitter.com/S9Zol8Vj2G

— Kwiatek-Grabarska (@KGrabarska) October 28, 2017

Presenting @Europeanaeu at #spw16 @eu_schoolnet Giving educators access to great free resources for their lessons pic.twitter.com/BkARH5P08X

— Rafael Montero (@rafaelmb_1) October 28, 2017

The next Europeana workshop will be held on 8 until 10 December in Brussels. There, the teachers will present the final design of their learning scenarios and confirm which Europeana resources they’ve decided to use. A big thanks to European Schoolnet team for the perfect event organization and to the participants for their contribution and passion. We can’t wait to hear about their experiences and learning projects with Europeana. Follow up on the workshop outcomes by joining our dedicated LinkedIn group or the #EuropeanaEducation conversation on Twitter!