Historiana, an international online platform for history and citizenship educators
Historiana is an online learning platform developed by EuroClio and Europeana. It supports the use of cultural heritage collections in education and helps cultural heritage institutions to engage with students. Historiana is currently developed and promoted by three main teams: the Historical content team, Learning and teaching team and Concept, Design and Development team. Each of these teams advances the platform in different ways, creating new content, implementing user feedback and supporting colleagues.
Recruiting and training new trainers
To further the goals of the Teaching and Learning team, in April 2021 EuroClio launched a new programme to recruit trainers for the platform, and 23 educators from 13 countries applied to become Historiana trainers.
Applicants had to complete several steps of training to become certified. First, they familiarised themselves with a training package prepared by the Teaching and Learning team, and with Historiana itself. They then met for an intensive online workshop which included the creation of eLearning activities that demonstrated critical historical thinking skills. Finally, the applicants had to review and update EuroClio’s current teacher training guide to bring new insights and updated methods into the content. In the end, 11 educators were awarded the certificate and became Historiana trainers!
Updating the teacher training guide
The feedback which the applicants provided on EuroClio’s teacher training guide was very positive. Nevertheless, they made a few improvements which have been incorporated into the guide, focusing in particular on updating its exemplary activities, eLearning activities used as best practices on Historiana. In addition, they reviewed and updated learner challenges and the language was made more accessible for teachers who are not familiar with Historiana. You can access and download the updated guide here!
Supporting outreach and multilinguality
By increasing the number of Historiana trainers, the Teaching and Learning team hopes to be able to reach a broader audience. Trainers will be able to support the organisation of local workshops in their own countries (important in a time of ongoing travel restrictions), reaching more educators than ever before. In the coming year, as part of their collaboration with Europeana, EuroClio will be organising training in the local area of all the new trainers. These events, delivered by the new trainers, will be held either online or in-person, depending on the rules in each country, and will introduce the platform to history and citizenship educators and present Historiana’s new features to experienced educators.
The number of languages in which the training can take place has also increased from 6 to 13, helping to promote Historiana to educators whose preferred language may not be English. Additionally, the new trainers will be able to translate or add new resources in Historiana in other languages, increasing the internationality of the platform. All these benefits will further help the discovery of international (re)sources made available by Europeana.
Get involved
If you are an educator interested in becoming a Europeana trainer, please get in contact with EuroClio at [email protected]! You can also explore resources in the updated teacher training guide.
If you are an aggregator or cultural heritage institution working with Europeana, you can create a partner page on Historiana to promote your resources to educators by curating your own source collections or eLearning activities. Check out the Photoconsortium, Rijksmuseum, Swedish Open Cultural Heritage and Imperial War Museum pages for inspiration and contact [email protected] for more information about creating a page.