eTwinning Seminar: Making Historical Thinking Explicit to Students Using Online Tools

Topic

On 14 May, EuroClio hosted an eTwinning seminar on how to use the Historiana e-Activity builder in combination with the Europeana Collections. If you were not able to attend this first edition, don’t panic! On 25 June, we will host the second edition of the eTwinning online seminar, to explain how you can design learning activities with Historiana, using sources from the Europeana Collections.

As a history, heritage, or citizenship educator, you are quite likely already familiar with the Europeana Collections. The platform holds an incredible amount of useful sources, all accessible for free. Moreover, for every source, copyright information is provided as a guide for how to use the material. In short, the Europeana Collections are an extremely useful resource for educators who want to use more (digitised) primary sources in their lessons.

However, in order to unlock the full potential of the Europeana Collections, it is important to learn how to navigate this platform. This is why EuroClio, in collaboration with Europeana, is hosting trainings to bring these skills to teachers throughout Europe.

Aims

The main aim of the eTwinning seminar is to support educators to use online learning activities created or adapted by themselves in order to help their students to think historically. At the end of the seminar, the participants will know how the Historiana e-Activity Builder works in practice and what kind of historical sources are available on Historiana, as well as be equipped with concrete ideas for the creation of their own eLearning Activities. The source collections that will be used and presented during the seminar are already available on Historiana!

How can I join the seminar?

If you are already part of the eTwinning Community, in order to join, you just need to enter the platform, click on Professional Development, and join the session at least 15 minutes before the starting time. If you are not yet registered with eTwinning, you need to create an account first. Registration is freely available to all staff (teachers, head teachers, librarians, etc.) working in a school in one of the participating European countries and can be done via this link.

More information

[su_accordion]

[su_spoiler title=”eTwinning”]eTwinning offers a platform for staff (teachers, head teachers, librarians, etc.), working in a school in one of the European countries involved, to communicate, collaborate, develop projects, share and, in short, feel and be part of a learning community. eTwinning promotes school collaboration in Europe through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by providing support, tools and services for schools. eTwinning also offers opportunities for free and continuing online Professional Development for educators. You can join the eTwinning Community for free here.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]

[su_accordion]

[su_spoiler title=”Europeana”]Europeana Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research. The Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for. There are also dedicated thematic collections on art, fashion, music, photography and World War I that contain galleries, blogs and exhibitions. The webportal is accessible via www.europeana.eu.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]

[su_accordion]

[su_spoiler title=”Historiana”]

Historiana.eu is an online resource for history educators in Europe and beyond. It offers free historical content, ready to use learning activities, and innovative digital tools made by and for history educators across Europe. Historiana’s development is informed by the EuroClio manifesto and it seeks to provide material that is complex and multi-perspective in order to promote critical thinking.

The site is constantly being added to and updated. On it you will find material that is rich in subject knowledge. This can be particularly useful for trainee teachers and teachers moving to a new topic, who feel that their own subject knowledge needs improving before they can plan how to teach a topic. The historical content can also be used directly by students. There are also copyright free source collections, including from Europeana. These are chosen carefully to present a variety of perspectives and to engage students of all abilities. You will find blogs about existing online resources that can be adapted for use in the history classroom, and also blogs about different teaching strategies with ideas about how to use them. In addition to the rich historical content, there is a teaching and learning section. Historical thinking, teaching methods and teaching challenges are explained and exemplified with learning activities. All learning activities are provided as Word documents, with a teachers’ guide, so that you can adapt and change them for the needs of your own students.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]

[su_accordion][su_spoiler title=”Historiana e-Activity Builder”]

The historiana.eu site has an e-activity builder. The e-activity builder has been designed to promote historical thinking and be easy to use. It is neither a resource that is just more up-to-the-minute than the same idea on paper, nor a resource for the technologically very confident teacher. It enables you to develop enquiry questions, to set up a sequence of learning using digital tools designed by other history teachers, and to get your students to respond to the question in a way that you can assess. You can either build your own activities for students to use in class or at home by importing material from historiana.eu or elsewhere, or you can adapt and use e-activities already developed by others. A simple sign in process creates your e-activity builder area where you can organise your own activities, save your favourite sources and keep lists of students. This can, of course, be in any language.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]

How to stay up to date?
To stay up to date with the latest developments related to Historiana, including announcements for more free online trainings, you can:

• Register for the EuroClio Newsletter
• Join the Historiana Facebook Group
• Follow Historiana on Twitter

This eTwinning Seminar is part of the Europeana DSI3 project

Language

English