Historiana is an online learning platform developed by EuroClio, the European Association of History Educators, and the Europeana Initiative. It supports the use of cultural heritage collections in education and helps cultural heritage institutions to display their digital collections and engage with students.
Over the past few years, the EuroClio and Historiana teams have been working hard to make Historiana fit to be used by new teachers, in new languages, and with new sources. Looking back over the last 12 months, we are proud to see how far we’ve come, and excited to reflect on what will happen next. Read on to discover the latest developments.
Towards a multilingual Historiana
Educational professionals have highlighted many times that having access to Source Collections and eLearning Activities in their students’ own language would make Historiana more widely used across schools and countries. But further questions had to be answered so that we could meet this need: how should we select which content to translate? Which languages should we focus on? How should we prioritise them?
We decided to let the educators themselves decide, and in September 2022 we launched a call for translators within the EuroClio network. Educators could express their interest in translating one or more Source Collections and eLearning Activities made with items shared through Europeana.eu, that they believed would benefit teachers and students in their countries. As a result, we are happy to announce that 35 resources are now available in Bosnian, Brazilian Portuguese, Croatian, Czech, French, and Slovakian, and more languages are soon to come. These range from e-learning activities on the consequences of coffee to Julius Caesar. Take a look at the complete list of all the translated content.
Entering a new era of Teacher Training
The Spring of 2023 saw us launch the pilot of the first-ever Historiana Self Paced Course. Over a three month pilot, 20 teachers and educators from across Europe and beyond tested a set of five modules carefully designed to guide new Historiana users. They followed the steps of working with the platform, including selecting a topic; developing an inquiry question; selecting sources; curating an eLearning activity to help students develop high order critical thinking skills; and crafting clear instruction and assessment tools. The activities developed during the course will be published on Historiana.
Our pilot participants have been so kind as to not only go through the course, but provide critical feedback to each part. The Historiana team is updating the course now, and we can’t wait for its launch in November 2023!