What is Europeana about?

Europeana is Europe's digital cultural heritage platform. It currently provides access to over 58 million digitised items from more than 3500 European libraries, museums, archives and galleries. This huge database represents a great media, thematic and language variety – you can find images, text, audio, video and 3D content on art, architecture, maps, films, natural history, fashion and more in over 37 languages. A big part of this content – over 20 million items – is openly licensed and can be freely reused in various research and learning projects. Europeana can provide multiple perspectives on historical, political, economic, cultural, and human developments across Europe and beyond.

European Schoolnet's involvement in Europeana DSI-4 project

The Europeana DSI-4 project continues the work of the previous three Europeana Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs). European Schoolnet's task in the Europeana DSI-4 project is to continue and expand the Europeana Education Community. This is done through three main activities. Organizing and coordinating two groups of teachers (the 13 Europeana Teacher Ambassadors and the Europeana Education User Group of 130 teachers); creating and maintaining the Teaching with Europeana blog space and updating, rerunning and translating the "Europeana in your classroom: building 21^st-century competences with digital cultural heritage" MOOC.

The Europeana teacher Ambassador Network

The Europeana teacher Ambassador Network consists of 13 Europeana Ambassadors from 12 different countries, while one of them represents the European Schools. The Ambassadors support the project by leading the development of learning scenarios with Europeana content, promoting and adopting these resources at the national level and facilitating the Europeana Teacher User Group.

Between November 2018 and January 2019, the Europeana Teacher Ambassadors developed and tested 14 pedagogical scenarios and learning activities that incorporate Europeana content. The scenarios have been made available under Creative Commons licenses and have been integrated in the Future Classroom Lab Directory of professional development resources for teachers.

Click below to discover the scenarios created by the Ambassadors.

• Vintage VR
• Time Travel Agency
• Europeana Living Museum
• Postwar Romania
• The Great War through children's eyes
• Using arts to reconstruct a volcanic eruption
• Birds are singing!
• Letters & postcards from war times
• Europe and me
• Migration Socratic Seminar
• Changing role of women in early 20th century
• Life on the trenches – A VR Experience
• The power of voice and brush
• Exploring and questioning philosophical ideas through images

Below you can watch a short clip in which the Ambassadors share insight about their learning scenarios:

Among their various activities, the Ambassadors also deliver two webinars in their own languages at the national level to popularize the use of Europeana resources in the classroom.

Last but not least, another mission of the Ambassadors is to facilitate the Europeana Teacher User Group in their country and act as a connection between the ten teachers in their User Group and European Schoolnet. This involves assisting the User Group teachers in creating their own learning scenarios, as well as monitoring and animating learning scenarios and implementation stories on the Teaching with Europeana blog.

DSI-4 workshops: the Ambassadors invited for a workshop at European Schoolnet

From 30 November to 1 December 2018, the 13 Europeana Teacher Ambassadors participated in a workshop to learn how to best use Europeana resources in their teaching.

During this workshop, the teachers were introduced to some of the best techniques for finding content in the Europeana Collections and continued to develop their learning scenarios. The Ambassadors also received training and prepared work for the upcoming project year. After the workshop, the Europeana Teacher Ambassadors returned to their classrooms and in many cases implemented their learning scenarios. In December, they were introduced to the 10 User Group teachers they coordinate, organized a training for their User Group and led them through the development of further learning scenarios, using Europeana content.

The Europeana User Group Teachers

Based on the initial DSI-3 User Group of 60 teachers, the Europeana User Group has been expanded in the DSI-4 project to include a total of 130 teachers from 12 countries.

Teachers from the User Group have many opportunities to show their involvement during the project. For instance, based on a template developed by European Schoolnet, teachers create a learning scenario using resources from the Europeana Collection. Following which, they implement their own, but also other teachers' scenarios in their classroom, and write a blog post on the Teaching with Europeana blog. Teachers are also encouraged to provide feedback on the blog posts by commenting on the blog.

By being involved in the Europeana User Group, teachers get to be part of the growing Europeana Education Community. They also benefit from access to and support in learning how to use digital cultural heritage for teaching. At the end of each project year, the 30 most active User Group teachers will be invited to a Europeana DSI-4 teacher workshop in the Future Classroom Lab, with flight, hotel and meals covered.

Teaching with Europeana blog

The Teaching with Europeana blog space is an initiative to encourage teachers to share their experiences in incorporating Europeana resources in their classroom. The Teaching with Europeana blog space exhibits a catalogue of learning scenarios, including Europeana resources. Updated every week, the blog also provides stories of implementation on how resources are being implemented in classes. Ultimately, the blog is a meeting point for European teachers searching for resources and advice.

Teaching with Europeana is an ideal platform for teachers to:

• Discover new learning scenarios
• Share their experience
• Get feedback about their learning material
• Build a growing community

Would you like to know more about it? Why don't you visit the blog?

Professional development resources for teachers

The "Europeana in your classroom: building 21^st-century competences with digital cultural heritage" has been updated by incorporating the latest Europeana learning scenarios developed.

Open from the 14^th of January, Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage (Rerun)  MOOC has helped teachers from Europe and beyond in improving their understanding of cultural heritage, in order to efficiently integrate cultural heritage into their lessons and practices, using Europeana resources in classes.

Additionally, the MOOC has been translated in Spanish and Portuguese. These translated MOOCs are the first ones in the European Schoolnet Academy platform that are open to the public! They will launch on the 18^th of March 2019.

Find out what are teachers' reflections on how Europeana education imporves educational practices!