Discover multilingual resources for teachers with Historiana

Historiana is an online learning platform developed by EuroClio, the European Association of History Educators, and the Europeana Initiative. It supports the use of cultural heritage collections in education and helps cultural heritage institutions to display their digital collections and engage with students.

Over the past few years, the EuroClio and Historiana teams have been working hard to make Historiana fit to be used by new teachers, in new languages, and with new sources. Looking back over the last 12 months, we are proud to see how far we’ve come, and excited to reflect on what will happen next. Read on to discover the latest developments.

Towards a multilingual Historiana

Educational professionals have highlighted many times that having access to Source Collections and eLearning Activities in their students’ own language would make Historiana more widely used across schools and countries. But further questions had to be answered so that we could meet this need: how should we select which content to translate? Which languages should we focus on? How should we prioritise them?

We decided to let the educators themselves decide, and in September 2022 we launched a call for translators within the EuroClio network. Educators could express their interest in translating one or more Source Collections and eLearning Activities made with items shared through Europeana.eu, that they believed would benefit teachers and students in their countries. As a result, we are happy to announce that 35 resources are now available in Bosnian, Brazilian Portuguese, Croatian, Czech, French, and Slovakian, and more languages are soon to come. These range from e-learning activities on the consequences of coffee to Julius Caesar. Take a look at the complete list of all the translated content.

Entering a new era of Teacher Training

The Spring of 2023 saw us launch the pilot of the first-ever Historiana Self Paced Course. Over a three month pilot, 20 teachers and educators from across Europe and beyond tested a set of five modules carefully designed to guide new Historiana users. They followed the steps of working with the platform, including selecting a topic; developing an inquiry question; selecting sources; curating an eLearning activity to help students develop high order critical thinking skills; and crafting clear instruction and assessment tools. The activities developed during the course will be published on Historiana.

Our pilot participants have been so kind as to not only go through the course, but provide critical feedback to each part. The Historiana team is updating the course now, and we can’t wait for its launch in November 2023!

Strengthening our partnership with cultural heritage institutions

Over the last year we have increased our efforts to strengthen the partnership between Historiana and cultural heritage institutions, without which Historiana would not be the same; it is thanks to cultural institutions that we have access to the great sources which populate our Source Collections and are at the centre of our eLearning Activities.

This is why a few years ago we launched the Partner Pages: sections of Historiana dedicated to the publication and promotion of Source Collections and eLearning Activities made with the digitised collections of specific institutes. In an effort to reach new institutes and create new partner pages, in the last year we hosted our first train the trainer and networking event dedicated to bringing teachers and cultural heritage institutes together to discuss what makes great sources for classroom use, what do teachers need, and how can effective partnerships between schools and GLAM institutes be achieved. This event resulted in the launch of a new Historiana partner page with the National Library of Serbia, as well as in the drafting of more partner pages, now in the pipeline towards publication.

Get involved

We believe that the next school year is going to be as exciting and eventful as the one that just ended - if not more – and we would like for more people to get involved in helping us improve and expand Historiana! There are several ways to get involved:

As an educator, you can:

• Join and review the new iteration of the Self Paced Course. The course will be opened to the public in November 2023.

• Select eLearning Activities or Source Collections that you would like to see translated in your own language, and notify us.

As a cultural heritage institute, you can:

• Open your own partner page, with the help and support of the Historiana Teaching and Learning team.

• Join our next train the trainer and networking event, in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 25 to 27 April 2024.

For more information on any of these opportunities, please reach out to us at [email protected].