Protecting our Endangered Cultural Heritage (EN-CUR-365)
Cultural heritage is an integral part of our lives, it is everywhere around us and it shapes who we are, however, we are not often aware of what it is, how many different forms it has, the fact that it is in danger and that the responsibility for preserving it lies on us.
Preserving our culture for future generations
In order to raise students’ awareness of the importance of preserving cultural heritage for future generations, this lesson focuses explicitly on the topic of endangered cultural heritage and it addresses the following questions to the students: What constitutes cultural heritage and what types of heritage are there? Is cultural heritage at risk and why? What factors pose a threat to it? Do we need to protect it for future generations and how can we protect it? The students are invited to find the answers to these questions in the website for the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, also in UNESCO website and in the online exhibition “Heritage at Risk” on the Europeana, which is a very well-curated exhibition, covering our topic.
How will we do it?
The students’ task in this lesson is to collect data from the above-mentioned resources, adapt the data into new forms using a number of innovative ICT tools and share what they have learned with the rest of their school and the local community, preparing an article and a leaflet that would inform people about endangered cultural heritage.
This learning scenario has been developed during the English version of the “Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage (Rerun)” online course. The course aimed to improve teachers’ understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate it into their lessons and practices. The courses can be accessed here.
Author: Areti Sidiropoulou
Age of students: 15 – 18
Subject and topics: English, History, Geography, Civics/ Protecting Endangered Cultural Heritage
Learning scenario
CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and provided by the Wellcome Collection.