The integration of digital cultural heritage in the classroom is increasingly important as the 21st century brings further opportunities for digital teaching and learning. While the national curriculum can differ from country to country within the European Union, the demand to understand our common European history, cultural heritage and challenges for the future stays all-encompassing. Digital cultural heritage can be used not only to educate about Arts, History or Literature, but it also gives an excellent basis for teaching STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). For example, students can study original drawings of Leonardo da Vinci to understand the development of engineering techniques. Cultural heritage helps to enhance students’ soft skills and supports them throughout their learning process.
To integrate cultural heritage into the classroom, the Europeana Foundation (EF) has been working with European Schoolnet (EUN) for the last five years on creating Learning Scenarios (a teacher’s detailed description of the learning unit that guides class learning), testing them and training teachers on how to integrate them in their teaching.
In the 2018-2019 academic year, over 2,118 teachers from 45 countries, teaching mainly in primary and secondary schools, have been following trainings and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). They also have been involved in creating Learning Scenarios and using them in classes, impacting more than 38,000 students.
The teachers participating in the project are organised in two groups (Ambassadors and User Group), they meet at face to face trainings in Brussels, prepare webinars, videos in different languages, create online training materials and regularly share experiences on the Teaching with Europeana blog.
During the 2019–2020 academic year, the community is expected to grow by 1,000 teachers and will provide them with additional training opportunities. The Europeana in your classroom: building 21st century competences with digital cultural heritage MOOC will be offered in five languages with French and Italian added to the initial English, Spanish and Portuguese courses, bringing Europeana to even more pupils. More ready-to-use learning resources will be available to interested teachers.
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