On the 13th of September, EUROCLIO Executive-director Joke van der Leeuw-Roord and project manager Geert Kessels presented the latest development on the online educational environment ‘Historiana – Your Portal to the Past’ for an audience of experts on heritage education. The session was moderated by professor Maria Grever, director of the Center for Historical Culture. Dr. Stephan Klein provided the audience with another perspective on online history and heritage education by presenting his own project on the development of an online module on transatlantic slave trade. The audience participated actively in the discussion afterwards and came up with very valuable insights on a number of fundamental aspects of Historiana and provided EUROCLIO with feedback in regard to the next steps of the development of Historiana. 

EUROGEO is the European Association of Geographers. The Association is partner in the Euroclio project Historiana. EUROGEO develops several modules for the website with special focus on maps.

Another part of the collaboration is the dissemination of the project. During the EUROGEO conference in Dublin on July 1,2 and 3 the project was presented to 150 geographers from all over Europe. Next to that the pilot website was presented in a workshop where geographers worked together for two hours exploring Historiana and giving feedback on the use of it in classroom.

Harry Rogge, Secretary General of EUROGEO

EUROCLIO Ambassador Benny Christensen and EUROCLIO project manager Geert Kessels each delivered a presentation during the event ‘Teaching History in Higher Education: the 14th annual Higher Education Academy Teaching and Learning Conference 2012’. This event took place from 12 to 13 September in London. Benny Christensen gave a workshop on the Danish history exams in secondary education. His work was valued as a very interesting new perspective on examination traditions by the international audience. Geert Kessels presented the educational learning platform ‘Historiana – Your Portal to the Past’ to an audience of academic researchers and teachers. He aimed at promoting Historiana as a tool for researchers to be able to better connect themselves to the world of secondary education teaching.

From the 18^th until the 22^nd of April 2012, 25 history educators (secondary school teachers, PhD students and (junior) university lecturers) came together in Utrecht for the Case Studies of the Cold War Conference. The aim of the conference was to give scholars and teachers the opportunity to work together to consider the best way to apply the latest historical research in the classroom or in seminars.

During the five-day course, there were many fascinating lectures and interactive workshops on a wide variety of themes and events related to the Cold War. In between these talks and workshops, the participants set together in small groups to develop new teaching material. The lesson plans they came up with are incredibly fun and creative and they will soon be available on Historiana.

As part of the conference, the participants spent one afternoon at the Utrechts Stedelijk Gymnasium, one of the oldest grammar schools in the Netherlands, There, they had the chance to discuss their new lesson plans with some of the pupils. It seemed that the pupils had some experience with using primary sources like UN reports, but other historical sources like speeches and letters were not commonly used. The students believed that diaries and memoirs could provide an interesting perspective on the daily life of people in the past. Visual material was also very much appreciated. Overall, the pupils said they’d rather form their own opinion by analysing sources than listening to the teacher all the time.

The teacher discussion and the evaluation forms showed that the participants very much enjoyed this five-day course and suggestions were made about a (bi)annual repetition. Ideally, such a conference would travel around Europe. Euroclio will keep you posted on any further developments!