Is your country currently in lockdown? Have you and your colleagues embarked on the challenge of online teaching? Are you eager to try new teaching strategies and tools that would allow you to keep your students hooked on the topic even when at home, surrounded by many distractions? A quick conversation with the EuroClio community proves that you are not alone. Many teachers from across Europe are, in this very moment, designing their next (online) history lesson, and wondering how to make it interesting and informative for 20+ teenagers, in 20+ different rooms.
For this reason, we have developed a course of seven lessons that tackle different aspects of online teaching, and refer to useful strategies and tools. With this course, who sees different speakers share their experiences, as well as some useful tips and tricks on how to approach the challenge of online teaching, we hope to guide teachers from all across Europe in transferring their activities from the classroom to the web. Access to the course is free of charge.
All the lessons of the course are now available, and will remain on the EuroClio Youtube Channel for the time being. Until the 31 August 2020, you have the possibility to register to the course. Registering will allow you to receive the feedback forms for all the lessons, as well as to request a booklet containing additional materials and insights from the community of participants to the course. At the end of the course, we will release a certificate to all educators who took part to at least 5 lessons.
Course’s content
Lesson 1 – Online teaching, the basics. Jacek Staniszewski and Richard Kennett discuss how they have approached the transfer from classroom to online teaching, focusing on the effect that this has had on how they think teaching. They talk about the important of showing that teachers, also, are human, and about how, with online teaching, short, simple lessons and tasks might be best. You can find the lesson at this link: https://youtu.be/GD0-cuat0ds.
Lesson 2 – Creating Coherence, not Chaos. In this lesson, Helen Snelson (History Teacher Trainer and EuroClio Ambassador) and Sally Thorne (History Teacher and author of ‘Becoming an Outstanding History Teacher’) talk about planning online history teaching. Below, you can find some useful links that they mention in the lesson, as well as a short table of contents. You can find the lesson at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghyTOscIoVU&feature=youtu.be.
Lesson 3 – Sifting the Fabulous from the Fake. In this lesson, Ute Ackermann Boeros (American International School of Cyprus) and Alice Modena (EuroClio) talk about the use of primary sources in online history teaching, reliable online source collections, and tasks for students. You can find the lesson at this link: https://youtu.be/ZhUoTJVd6pc.
Lesson 4 – Energy and Engagement. In this lesson, Helen Snelson (History Teacher Trainer and EuroClio Ambassador) and Alice Modena (EuroClio) discuss how one can make online learning a little more varied. Helen presents some strategies on how to prepare students to develop the mindset to engage in debates and discussions, and to recognise the multiple perspectives that reside within history. You can find the lesson at this link: https://youtu.be/kfpL9_QpZXA.
Lessons 5.1 – Tools to complement your teaching – part one. In this lesson, Hannah Young (History, Politics and Modern Studies teacher at the Dollar Academy in Dollar, Scotland) and Alice Modena (EuroClio) talk about how to use Canva (canva.com) to create engaging tasks for your students, and how to integrate it with Adobe Express (https://www.adobe.com/express/) to create short videos to complete your lessons. You can find the lesson at this link: https://youtu.be/V7BscNyj7pY.
Lessons 5.2 – Tools to complement your teaching – part two. In this lesson, Natia Pirtskhalava (History Teacher and member of the Georgian Association of History Education) and Alice Modena (EuroClio) talk about the use of MindMup 2.0 to create collaborative mind maps with your students, introducing different tasks for students of different levels. You can find the lesson at this link: https://youtu.be/kj1rkSoMuu8.
Lesson 6 – Assessment in online teaching. In this lesson, Anthony Malone and Majella Dempsey (Maynooth University) discuss how to approach assessment in online teaching. They present some suggestions on how to mainstream assessment throughout the teaching experience, how to use group assessment or peer assessment, and how to share feedback with your students. You can find the lesson at this link: https://youtu.be/P-JRUuSKEeI.
All the lessons are available on EuroClio’s YouTube channel, in the playlist “Online course on online teaching”.
IMPORTANT: to ensure that every teacher could join the course following their own timetable, we have decided to share recorded lessons. We are, in any case, available at answering to any questions you might have about the content of the course. Please, email your questions to Alice Modena at alice@euroclio.eu, and she will put you in contact with the speakers.
Created by EuroClio.
Curated by Alice Modena (Professional Development Coordinator), edited by Catherine Savitsky (Project Manager)