Robert Stradling (Historiana Editor-in-Chief), Helen Snelson (Historiana Learning Team) and Steven Stegers (EuroClio Programme Director) presented the Historiana First World War Module during the 26th Annual Schools History Project Conference, during the plenary session “It is not just the Western Front… EuroClio presents an online multiperspective approach to WW1”. The presentation introduced a wide range of source materials, but also teaching tools such as a newsreel of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie, a multi-stranded timeline of Key Moments in WW1 and a video tutorial of the Annotation Tool. These will be made available after the summer. For more information, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org
On 19 and 20 May, Europeana Foundation organized the kick-off meeting of its new Europeana Digital Service Infrastructure (DSI) project. The meeting took place at the National Archives and National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague, Netherlands. In this project EuroClio will build on the work that has been done within the EuropeanaCreative project and further develop the functionalities on the Historiana website to stimulate the re-use good quality and free to use sources from the large database of digitized cultural heritage of Europeana. In this one and a half year project we will work with European Schoolnet and the Foundation for the History of Technology of Eindhoven University in The Netherlands specifically for the re-use of the sources in education. This will enable us to largely increase our offer of useful and ready-to-use sources on Historiana by the end of the project in 2016.
From 18 May to 22 May, Gwen Vergouwen (a history educator from Belgium) worked at the offices of EuroClio and Europeana on the development of an iBook on “The Descent into WW1”. This cooperation was part of a residency programme for Apple Distinguished Educators. The iBook makes use of historical sources that were found via the Europeana portal and that illustrate the ongoing debate between historians related to the causes of WW1. EuroClio contributed to the book by sharing resources and materials developed by the Historiana historical content and learning teams for the World War 1 module. The iBook will be published in Dutch and English, and will be freely available. For more information please contact Steven Stegers.
With the current climate of debate on CIA interrogation techniques, it is likely that students will be questioning its moral and ethical dilemmas in their classrooms. The history of interrogation techniques, the war on terror and its impact on human rights are now at the forefront of many news headlines and stories giving the issues a prominent position in the media the younger generation is exposed to.
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On 10 November a group of 10 educators from all over Europe came together in at the European Schoolnet (EUN) Lab in Brussels to test the user’s experience of the new Historiana Learning Section and Analysis tool, within the EuropeanaCreative project. After a warm welcome by Bart Verswijvel from EUN and a short introduction to the project and section by EuroClio Project Manager Judith Geerling, the testing session was led by Nico Kreinberger from Innovation Agency Media and Creative Industries (MFG), one of the partners in the project.
In the testing the educators gave valuable feedback on the navigation, accessibility, design & layout and efficiency of the learning section and tool. The results of the session will be used to improve your experience as a visitor of the Historiana website (www.historiana.eu). Additionally, EuroClio Programme Director Steven Stegers collected feedback from the educators on how they could and would use the Analysis Tool for their disciplines, varying from geography to IT and languages.
Historiana was presented by Steven Stegers (EuroClio Programme Director) in Rome on 2nd October as an example of good practice on the use of digital cultural content in the field of education. More than 300 representatives of National Governments, the European Commission and major museums, archives and libraries across Europe participated in this event.
More information, including the presentations by other speakers (such as Jill Cousins – Director of Europeana, Wim Pijbes – Director of the Rijksmuseum and Rossella Caffo – Direttore dell’Istituto centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane) can be found at http://www.athenaplus.eu/romeconference/.
One of the aims of Historiana is to provide educators with tools for online learning to promote historical thinking. The first tool is now ready to use on the Learning Section of Historiana: the Analysis tool. Once registered, educators can use this tool to make an assignment for their students, who in turn can make annotations with justifications on a complex online source, either coming from the Historiana database or uploaded by the educator.
Try to make your own account and have a go! We are anxious to learn about your experience with this tool, both good and bad. Please write your inputs to Judith Geerling by mail.
The Historiana Historical Content and Learning editing teams both came together for the first time in over a year in Tallinn, Estonia from 25-27 August to work on the final stage of the World War 1 module that is under development since the beginning of 2013 and set the future for Historiana. The meeting took place in the Institute of Education of the University of Tallinn, which simultaneously organised a teacher training seminar for over 40 Estonian history educators. Historiana Editor-in-Chief Bob Stradling presented the World War 1 module and the new learning section to this group, which were received with great enthusiasm.
Former EuroClio trainee Francesco Scatigna was welcomed as the newest editor in the Historical Content team during this meeting. The Learning team editors worked on the final editing of the exemplar learning activities that have been developed in the last one and a half year, and are now gradually uploaded to the new Learning section of Historiana [la.historiana.eu]. The historical content team editors agreed on the final steps for the development of the content areas in the module including the ‘Descent into war’, ‘Experiencing the war’ and ‘Reporting the war’. The full module will be available online on www.historiana.eu by the end of 2014. The editors also discussed the future development of Historiana and agreed to first develop a skeleton with content areas, and then populate this with sources collaboratively. Some of the editors agreed to be involved in the new Historiana project ‘Decisions and Dilemma’s’. Moreover, they agreed to train new Historiana trainers to expand the pool of people that can give workshops on Historiana throughout Europe. This resulted in the call for Core Team members for the new Historiana project Innovative History Education for All. During the visit to Tallinn there was also some time for on-site learning. The weather cleared up for a 2-hour city walk kindly provided by the daughter of EuroClio ambassador’s Mare Oja, in which the editors got an impression of the rich history of the city centre of Tallinn.
To mark the centennial of the beginning of the First World War, the Institutes of History from the University of Sarajevo together with partner research organisation from Budapest, Graz, Ljubljana, Regensburg, Skopje, Sofia and Zagreb, and the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity worked together to organise the Conference “The Great War: Regional Approaches and Global Context”. The conference was opened by a key-note speech by EuroClio Honorary Board Member Prof. Mark Mazower (see video). Historiana editor-in-chief Bob Stradling and EuroClio Programme Director Steven Stegers presented the Historiana First World War Module, in a session moderated by EuroClio Ambassador Edin Radusic (see video). For more information, please see the official site of the conference or the YouTube Channel.
From 20-22 May Historiana editors Bob Stradling, Chris Rowe and Historiana trainee Jorien van Driel met in Edinburgh to work on the further development of the Historiana First World War module. The team worked on different content areas that highlight specific aspects of the WW1 and agreed on a strategy on delivering the content of the Historiana First World War Module up to July. The module will consist of several resources that can be used to teach about WW1 in a comparative and transnational way: the Multi-Stranded Timeline, TimeMap and the Multiperspectivity Video. More information can be found in the brochure.