Building the New
‘The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’ /Dan Millman/
It is mid-January – time for reflections, resolutions and new beginnings. As always, I am wondering what the New Year will bring to us; as never before, I am making a wish of ‘coming back to normal,’ to teaching in the classroom, meeting my friends, travelling – just like when I started my journey with Europeana in 2018 and have enjoyed it since then. What is the secret of Europeana’s successful message? For me, it is the change transforming the world with ‘the old’ – cultural heritage – provided in the digitized way that encourages teachers and students to use its numerous resources to learn, to create and recreate and so – to build the new.
Let’s celebrate the beginning of 2021!
What I really like about Europeana is the fact I can use it to provide my students not only with great images but also high quality information concerning various topics making the learning process more complete. Thus, we are going to start the New Year with some educational fireworks! Do you know which country takes the lead as for celebrating with fireworks? You can easily check it in the Celebrations in Europe exhibition, in the Fire and Water section. Does the witch Befana visit you on 6th January? Or maybe you can expect a meeting with Knut on 13th January? If not, you can still read about them in the Light and Dark chapter. Are you surprised to hear the Chinese New Year is still to come and the year of the Rat finishes only on 11th February 2021? I am sure you will enjoy reading about 8 things you should know about Chinese New Year. And so will my students.
Back to school or still online?
No matter what the answer to the above question is, Europeana User Group teachers provide ready-to-use solutions that will definitely diversify your classes! They have already created over 500 Learning Scenarios and almost 200 Stories of Implementation. What characterizes all of them is flexibility – the lessons are based on modern ICT tools so even the ones that were not prepared with the aim of remote teaching can easily be adapted to such a situation following some slight modifications. Also, don’t forget about the Distance learning section in the Europeana Classroom if you are searching for engaging activities for your students. How to involve your students’ emotional intelligence if you work with them virtually? How to provide feedback successfully? Answers to these and many other questions can be found in the above-mentioned section.
New ideas for the New Year
It is always a good idea to try new options to get well-organised. We keep making lists (by the way, is your New Year’s Resolutions List ready?:) to remember and to have everything close at hand. What about making your own collections? Now with Europeana offering you to create an account, you can save your favourite items and have your own Europeana galleries – both public and private ones gathered at one place, waiting to be used in the future to build the new! I have already started making my collections. What about you? What is the first item you have added to the list of your likes? What is the first collection you have created thanks to the Europeana account? Please share the information in the comments below to inspire other teachers!
May 2021 turn out to be full of fresh ideas helping you to build the new!
Interested in Europeana? You can also read about:
Tackling New Challenges and Audiences in Education
Glance over One of Europeana’s Remote Teaching Opportunities
The New Europeana Collections from a Teacher’s Perspective
By Katarzyna Siwczak, Europeana Education Ambassador