The Collections include topics such as:

 

Try to find one resource you think you can use to create a learning scenario. Then, explain what it is about and suggest some possible activities you may develop in this scenario: My respond was:
I  would like to explore the works by painter Katona Ferdinand with some of my classes. His paintings are dedicated to Slovakian landscape - The Tatra mountains and the nearby countryside - the places that are close to the place we live in. Exploring art pieces that show the beauties and life of the familiar environment can be a good way of motivating students and building their positive attitude to art in general.

How to Search the Europeana Collection

MY RESPOND:TITLE of the OBJECT: EARLY SPRING IN THE TATRAS
AUTHOR: CATONA FERDINAND
TYPE of LICENCE:
Free Re -use
LINK to the OBJECT:
https://www.webumenia.sk/dielo/SVK:SNG.O_1468

The first resource we would like to mention is Transcribathon for education. This is an online collaborative tool designed with the partner Facts & Files, which allows students to transcribe and annotate documents related to the First World War, like diaries, letters, etc.

The possibilities offered by this tool are numerous, as you can choose from a large variety of handwritten texts and primary sources and use these documents in the context of any subject of your choice. This could be, for example, in History (related to WW1 and national/regional history), specific language classes, or in Civic, Social and Political Education programmes.

Transcribathon can be used in a wide variety of educational settings (from secondary to university level) and it allows students to work either in groups or individually. Besides, the tool is available in various languages, which helps students to engage even more fully with their heritage or to use it for language learning.

This is a very fun and powerful tool that can bring history to life, and that will help you engage students with history they don’t find in the textbooks. Do you want to know what students can learn from this tool? Have a look at this very inspiring video where students using Transcribathon shared their own experience with us.

TASK: Explore the learning activities of the Historiana platform and find a learning activity you would like to use in your classroom. Then, add a note to the following Padlet which includes:

MY RESPOND:
TITLE of ACTIVITY:
Dehumanisation and self-assertion.
LINK: https://demo.historiana.eu/#/learning-activity/dehumanisation-and-self-assertion
EXPLANATION: I am an English teacher and my oldest students are 15.
They are going to visit the concetration camp in AUSCHWITZ, POLAND and learn more about the camps of the Nazi Germany.  Based on the knowledge  from History lessons, from the shool trip and material at Historiana, they will study about Buchenwald Nazi camps, work in groups and exchange their ideas, explain their findings to the others.

Europeana gives you access to a wide variety of applications, developed by third parties, that you can utilise in your class within many fields, such as Science, Cultural Heritage or Art.

You will find a selection of applications here. Some apps that are worth mentioning are: Sourcera, a free tool that allows you to search the largest archives in the world, Art Up Your Tabor Sound Connections. Please do consider that some of these applications have been created without direct supervision from Europeana and therefore proper functioning cannot be guaranteed.
we suggest you try the Vangoyourself tool. This is a very inspiring application that will allow you to easily engage your students with cultural heritage. To recreate a famous painting, you just need to go to this website and then follow these simple steps:

 What are 21st-century skills?

 

In the following paragraphs, you can follow and compare how different European stakeholders and organisations define 21st-century skills.

The European Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp) is a document that collects several guidelines and offers a tool to improve citizens’ digital skills.

As the World Economic Forum reports, the skills that people have are lagging behind the skills that people (or employers) actually need, and the gap is growing wider. The skills that are needed the most are collaboration, communication and problem-solving. These are primarily acquired through social and emotional learning (SEL). Eventually SEL leads to higher employability and educational fulfillment. If you would like to find out more regarding the World Economic Forum’s position on the issue, please consult this article.

It is interesting to compare this position with the framework of the National Council on Measurement in Education:

 

In this section, you will have the chance to explore a rubric to use with your students in cultural heritage lessons. When working with rubrics, it is important to take into account that they need to be adapted to the content of the learning scenario and also to the students' age.

Some criteria for using a rubric to assess a student's skill in relation to a cultural heritagelesson can be, for instance:

Teachers using both PBL and AR claim that their use in the classroom is beneficial, as augmented reality changes the way that students interact with their world and the way they learn their subject matter. Besides, if you work with printed AR-enabled worksheets, you allow students to keep working with AR from home, which will keep their interest and engagement alive outside school. This aspect is very important, as it enables students to foster a positive relationship with education and technology, and they can advance at their own pace.

The scenario that Gilles has created allows students to link the past with today’s political problems, by combining project-based learning and augmented reality. In order to carry out this project, students have to find various resources (maps, photos, videos) about their region, Alsace, or any other region facing political tension. Once they have conducted the research, they construct an augmented reality product, also discussing how peaceful citizens can contribute to solving the initial political tension. This way, students have not only gained history knowledgeand technical skills by working for a period of time to investigate Alsace and its origins, but they have also become more motivated and engaged thanks to augmented reality. The combination of these two approaches makes teaching and learning more rewarding, as they help to connect students and schools with communities and the real world, which boosts students' engagement and motivation to work.

If you are interested in using PBL in your school, take a look at this page, where you will find the information you need to create a successful project that will maximise student learning and engagement.

If you want to know more about Augmented Reality, the International Society for Technological Education has a great number of resources on producing printable AR worksheets that can be adjusted to fit any age group and subject matter. Moreover, you can investigate the topic of AR further by reading A Scannable Solution for Your Classroom by Monica Burns, which provides educators with examples of how to use AR with QR Codes efficiently.

COLLABORSTIVE LEARNING
According to research by Laal and Ghodsi (2012), the benefits of collaborative learning are many: it allows the learner to realise her own interdependence with others, and encourages positive interaction and recognition of responsibility. What is more, collaborative learning (CL) in the classroom promotes critical thinking skills, increases results in the classroom and creates learning communities.

The Learning Designer

 

In this section, you will learn about the Learning Designer and how to use it to plan your lessons effectively.

The Learning Designer is produced independently by the London Knowledge Lab. It is a Web-based toolthat facilitates the creation and sharing of learning designs and supports the integration of learning technology.

The learning design is displayed as a sequence of activities you have created, similar to a lesson plan, and shows all the main properties you have included, such as topic, number of students, aims, outcomes, and duration of the learning time.

The first thing you need to do in order to become familiar with the Learning Designer, is to create an account, if you don't have one yet. You can create a new account here.

After logging in to the Learning Designer, at the top you will see a tool bar with two buttons, "Designer" and "Browser".

 

Within this section, you can design your lesson. Start with specifying the title and topic of the session, the number of students and the duration. Additionally, you can determine the aimsand outcomes of the lesson and give a short description.

Once you have given the necessary information, you can click on "Add TLA", with which you can start adding a set of Teaching and Learning Activities (TLA). You can add a name and choose from 6 learning types: Read/Watch/Listen, Collaborate, Discuss, Investigate, Practice or Produce. For every section, you can specify how long it might take (time), how many students are involved (individual work = 1), whether or not the teacher needs to be present and you can give a description of what the students are going to be doing exactly. You can continue adding TLAs as long as you wish.

Once you have finished the design, you will see a pie chart in the top right corner of the page. This tells you exactly what percentage of the lesson your students will be spending experiencing the different learning types. You can also adjust the total learning time, if necessary.

The Learning Designer also enables the teacher to attach links to Open Educational Resources (OERs) anywhere on the web. For example, a presentation on SlideShare could be attached to a Read/Watch/Listen activity; a curation tool could be attached to an Investigation activity; and a worksheet on a shared drive could be attached to a Production activity.

When you finish creating your lesson plan, make sure you click the "Save" button and add your design to the learning design library. You can also convert the design into a Word document and download it.

 

This section is there to help you browse other, completed learning designs. It is also possible to adapt one for your classroom, by clicking on "Turn editing on". This creates a copy of the original learning design that you can freely edit.

Now that you know how the Learning Designer works, give it a try and plan a lesson according to the learning scenario you have been creating in the previous modules.

You can also view this example of a lesson plan created in the Learning Designer: An hour of code. Make sure to scroll around the lesson plan, because not all elements will be displayed inside the window.

Once you have created your lesson plan with the Learning Designer, please add the link to the learning scenario in the learning activities section. Make sure you add as much detail to your lesson plan as possible, specifying the timing for each activity, as well as the tasks that the students will have to carry out.

We are sure you will enjoy the Learning Designer; it is a very useful tool you can keep using to plan your own lessons!