Ludovia 2017: launching our pilot collaboration with the French ministry of education

Between 22-25 August 2017, Europeana joined the French Ministry of Education at Ludovia, the annual digital education summer university for educators. Europeana was the Guest of Honour in 2016, and one year later we were pleased to return with good news to share about how we’ve been working with the French Ministry of Education.

Europeana on Éduthèque

In a joint presentation with the Ministry, we announced our pilot collaboration and launched the new Europeana dedicated page on Éduthèque, the French national educational portal used by over 126,000 primary and secondary teachers in France. Our partner space on Éduthèque features links to a selection of fully translated galleries, exhibitions, and curated searches that the Ministry has selected as being particularly relevant for French educators. These include the translated ‘Leaving Europe: a new life in America’, relevant in the current context of migration into and across Europe, and a search for cultural heritage content related to the life and role of women in World War 1.

As part of this partnership, our Guide to using Europeana in education is now also available in French and the Transcribathon website now has a special area for education that we premièred with French educators.

Transcribathon at Ludovia 2017

The 14th edition of Ludovia enjoyed almost 1,000 attendees from across France and from French-speaking and neighbouring countries like Belgium. Held in the Pyrenees, this infamous event in the French educational calendar is a great location to work with teachers when they are relaxed and preparing to go back to school.

In addition to the presentation with the Ministry, we held two Transcribathon workshops over the Wednesday and Thursday of the conference. Amongst a packed schedule of workshops, talks and panels, we introduced educators to how they could use the Transcribathon tool in the classroom for educational benefit. The tool was well received and a number of educators signed up to start working on the available French content.

Late on Thursday, as everyone was packing up, we had the pleasure of hearing two attendees, Mr and Mrs Pérez, sing ‘Les Montagnards’. The illustrated lyrics of this famous regional song were featured as our poster image for the event. It was a fantastic finale to the conference and we hope you also enjoy the performance!

Next steps

Over the rest of 2017, we’ll work with the French Ministry of Education to make Europeana content directly available through the Éduthèque search function, bringing our content to a huge educational audience in France. We’ll also collaborate to explore how a small network of French teachers could be established to develop new learning resources with Europeana content.

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