This project was coordinated by the French Ministry of Education and Réseau Canopé, a national pedagogical resources provider, and ran from November 2017 to June 2018. The teachers used Éduthèque, a cultural and scientific resources platform for teachers, which included a selection of Europeana Collections content, translated in French and available online. The group was made up of 13 secondary-level teachers of various subjects such as history, French and literature, English, life and earth sciences, technology, arts and MIL (media and information literacy).
A collaborative workshop approach
In order to create the learning scenarios, the teachers attended three face-to-face workshops (29 November, 31 January and 16 May) organised by Réseau Canopé, in which they were introduced to the Europeana and Éduthèque platforms, as well as Creative Commons Licensed resources and the best information-seeking strategies for the Europeana Collections platform. They addressed questions such as whether it is better to search the entire collections, or use curated sets of data, such as Women in World War One.
French teachers inspired by Europeana resources
Once the scenarios were created, the teachers were ready to take them to the classroom for testing. After the implementation, they re-grouped to discuss their findings
Meanwhile, at the request of the French Ministry of Education, Réseau Canopé conducted over two months (February - March) a survey on teachers’ use of Europeana resources available on Éduthèque. The survey, with a total of 1,581 respondents, contributes to a more in-depth knowledge of how French teachers use online resources in their daily practice.
The feedback from both the teacher group and the wider survey matched. These are the findings:
Europeana is new and rather unknown to teachers, but a resource that attracts a lot of interest and curiosity.
Europeana for Éduthèque is best known for history/geography/media and information literacy teachers and, to a lesser extent, by teachers of French and languages.
Teachers at all levels are interested in Europeana's resources and these resources are quite different from the resources they commonly use.
The European dimension is especially specific to Europeana.
The Éduthèque portal appears as a guarantee of reliability and pedagogical validity to access such resources.
15 new learning scenarios to reuse in the classroom
The learning scenarios were developed by 13 teachers, all of which can be downloaded on the Éduscol portal :
Leaving Europe in the 19th century for English and history class
History of travel: planes, trains and automobiles for Technology
Let your art speak in English class
Berlin, issue and symbol of Cold War in History class
The function of women in the war Media and information literacy class
European migrations in the USA in History class
Create a certificate subject in French and History class
Act in the society: words of women in French and History class (2 scenarios)
Darwin’s ideas in the human evolution in L&E science
Food digestion in L&E science
Vaccination in L&E science
Representations of gods during Antiquity in Arts and Latin class
Kamishibai in Arts and French class
What’s next?
One of the next steps in the collaboration between Europeana and the French Ministry of Education will be making more and more Europeana selections available on Éduthèque by choosing various subject-related topics and offering a wide diversity of media and types of documents. The final purpose is to improve the visibility of Europeana resources on Éduthèque and show the pedagogical potentials of the resources, thanks to the learning scenarios created in this project.