Workshop for Digital Education and the Power of Storytelling with Europeana
Description of the event
The importance of digitally competent and confident teachers and educators has been dramatically brought to light by the recent Covid-19 pandemic, which forced schools and other cultural institutions to find solutions to replace face-to-face activities. Therefore the purpose of this seminar was to present to teachers the huge array of Europeana resources and free-open tools for online learning and how to acquire the digital skills and knowledge about innovative pedagogies that will improve their educational practice. This was an initiative undertaken by the members of the Mnemosyne project and was the first time such an event was organized in Cyprus and in the European Union at all.
Impact
The seminar was organized by the project researchers and targeted teaching professionals in primary, secondary and technical/vocational education. Participants from the Cyprus Association of Librarians – Information Scientists (CALIS), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport and Youth, and educational organizations joined in the seminar. The Minister of Education Culture Sports and Youth Mr. Prodromos Prodromou, made an opening speech and introduced the key guest speakers. Among them the director general of Europeana Mr. Harry Verwayen, the Chair lady of Europeana Association Network Ms. Suzan Hazan and Ms. Isabelle Crespo, the coordinator for business development of Education in Europeana.
Involvement and Mission
Cultural heritage artefacts tell stories about persons or events and within a classroom, it has the power to contextualize the ideas and concepts of a lesson, making it more accessible for students, enriching their learning experience and building connections with their own life. During the special event, which was dedicated to Europe Day (09/05/2021), one of the goals was to demonstrate to teaching professionals that it is impossible to imagine education without cultural heritage and storytelling.
In total 436 teachers attended the event. The example used during the training activity were coming from different digitizations of the digital heritage lab and are available under open access in Europeana.