in europe: „history caught in the act“

Am vergangenen Wochenende habe ich das gemeinsame Projekt des europäischen Geschichtslehrerverbands euroclio und des niederländischen Fernsehsenders VPRO noch in Brüssel auf einem Seminar vorgestellt.

Jetzt ist das Projekt gestartet und die Materialien sind online verfügbar:

https://www.vprobroadcast.com/titles/in-europe-schools.html

An der Erarbeitung der beiden ersten Materialpakete habe ich in dem internationalen Team mitgearbeitet. An den weiteren Materialien werde ich aufgrund beruflicher Veränderungen leider nicht mehr mitarbeiten können.

Ausgehend von der TV-Serie, die erst Ende Dezember im niederländischen Fernsehen startet, haben wir für den Unterricht Kurzfassungen („Starter Clips“ genannt) erstellt, die das Thema in maximal 15 Minuten anreißen und verschiedene Blickwinkel aufzeigen. Davon ausgehend kann dann mit den Materialien weitergearbeitet und das Thema vertieft werden. Die Filme sind immer in Originalsprache, ausgehend von der beispiehaften Geschichte, die erzählt wird (bei „Difficult History“ Bosnien, bei „Migration“ Deutschland und Ghana) und die jeweils Englisch untertitelt sind. Alle Starterclips sowie die komplette Fernsehserie soll im kommenden Jahr dann in 5 Sprachen, darunter u.a. Deutsch, übersetzt und frei zugänglich gemacht werden. Um einen Eindruck von diesen „Starter Clips“ zu bekommen, ist hier das Video zum Thema „Migration“:

Bei aller Befangenheit scheint mir das Projekt in mehrfacher Hinsicht innovativ und mitmachenswert:

– Die Schülerinnen und Schüler erstellen selbst Videos, die sie über YouTube mit anderen Klassen in Europa teilen und diskutieren.

– Lokale und europäische Perspektive(n) sind durchgängig von Beginn bis Ende des Projekts miteinander verknüpft.

– Zum Erstellen der Videos hat VPRO eine Reihe von professionellen und hilfreichen Videoanleitungen erstellt, u.a. zur Recherche, zum Schnitt, zum Führen von Interviews.

– Zur Bewertung der Schülerarbeiten – gegenseitig durch Mitschüler oder durch Lehrer/innen –  haben wir ein bewusst einfach gehaltenes Raster entwickelt (Download als PDF), das den Schülerinnen und Schüler zu Beginn der Videoarbeit bereits ausgeteilt  werden sollte, dies sorgt für Transparenz und ein Bewusstsein für die Qualitätskriterien bei der Videoarbeit

– Das Projekt beruht auf einer Kooperation von zwei Klassen aus unterschiedlichen europäischen Ländern – VPRO und euroclio vermitteln über ein Online-Kontaktformular während der Laufzeit des Projekts allen Interessierten Partnerschulen bzw. Partnerklassen in Europa

– Die Materialien, insbesondere die Videos, aber auch die in den Unterrichtseinheiten skizzierte Heransgehensweise können auch langfristig losgelöst von Kooperationen für Unterricht und Projektarbeit in der eigenen Schule genutzt werden, so sind z.B. die Tutorials zum journalistischen Arbeiten unabhängig vom Projekt „in europe“ interessant und hilfreich für die Medienbildung in Schulen

Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen: Wer sich auf das Projektarbeit mit „in europe“ einlässt, öffnet seinen Unterricht und schulisches Lernen inhaltlich, medial und räumlich. Wenn wir bei der Erstellung der Materialien nicht alles verkehrt gemacht haben, dann sind diese so strukturiert, dass sie auch vielleicht etwas unsichereren Lehrerinnen und Lehrern helfen, sich auf diese Form von Projektarbeit einzulassen, Kontrolle abzugeben und zugleich Schülerinnen und Schüler mehr Verantwortung und eigene Ausdruckmöglichkeiten zu geben.

Es würde mich freuen, wenn das Projekt und die Materialien eine breite Verwendung fänden. Bis Mitte 2020 läuft zunächst auch noch die Pilotierung. Wir freuen uns über konstruktive Rückmeldungen, um die vorhandenen Unterrichtseinheiten zu verbessern und die drei noch folgenden entsprechend aufzubauen und zu gestalten.

Lost places, Jewish history & Geocaching

On invitation of Trans.History I will be holding a workshop in Lviv, Ukraine next week. It is a 3-day seminar about “Civil Society, Social Media and Jewish History in Ukraine in the 20th Century”. My workshop will be about using location- and game-based activities in- and outside the classroom to work with the „lost places“ of Jewish culture and history. For anyone interested here are already the slides for my workshop. Any comments are welcome:

Textura – Telling (Hi)stories

Textura – Telling (Hi)stories“ is an attempt to develop a game for history lessons which, due to its modular structure, can be used with numerous historical themes in different grades.

“Textura” can help students to:

• • • • depict historical connections

      • make developments comprehensible

      • focus on specific questions

      • contextualize abstract concepts

      • structure historical narratives

      • support pupils in the development of own stories

      • illustrate the complexity of history

“Textura” is an approach to promoting the narrative competence of pupils in history education while also deepening their content knowledge. Because of its modular structure, “Textura” can be customized to match different thematic approaches or historical periods, so that the game can be used in different school types and classes. Because of its standardized game principle, “Textura” can be used in different grades or with different topics. Once students know the basic principles, time-consuming explanations are no longer necessary and the focus can be placed directly on the topic.

Thanks to the help of David Korfhage, we were able to translate the concept for the game in English as well as two sets of „content cards“ as examples. The „connection cards“ use only symbols, so they do not need to be translated.

You will find the concept and the content and connection cards as PDF Download here:

• Download: Textura Concept English (PDF)
• Content Cards Middle Ages
• Content Cards: Absolutism
• Textura Connection cards

If you have any questions, doubts or thoughts about it, do not hesitate contacting us. We are still at an early stage and like to develop „Textura“ further.

Working with the Europeana 1914-18 collections in the history classroom – Part 1/3: Scarcity vs. abundance

The Europeana 1914-1918 project has collected and digitised tens of thousands of private objects on World War One within the past years and put them online. Are these collections of any use for learning history in school? I think yes, but to work with these sources history lessons have to change.

History teaching in school still is based mainly on textbooks, photocopies and maybe overhead transparencies. They offer a limited space. So teachers and students work with a reduced number of primary and secondary sources. In fact, the reduction seems in the first place quite an advantage – at least from the teacher’s point of view. The sources are already chosen and adopted to the use in school (transcripted, shortened etc.). The given materials are supposed to be relevant as they were chosen by the authors of the books based on the requirements of the curriculum. There are three inherent promises for the teacher: If you work with these sources 1) you can be sure to execute the curriculum, 2) you have less work and 3) you teach your students what is generally acknowleged as „important“ in history.

So everything is fine? Well, I am not so sure about it. I often hear pupils complain about being really interested in history but they say as subject in school history appears to be rather boring. That is why I would like to ask you to take closer look and to change the perspective to the pupil’s point of view.

Reading primary sources in the classroom often means nothing else than rephrasing the content of short snippets of texts which all look alike: a 18th century letter looks like a telegram or a medieval charter. In addition in many schoolbooks primary sources serve mainly as “source based evidence” for the presentation of history written by the schoolbook’s authors.

That is why two important things are often missing in the history classroom:

1) The students do not have to come up with their own questions about history – tasks and questions are also already given by the book or the teacher in accordance with the materials.

2) Therefore, one of the most important questions in the work of an historian almost never appears in the classroom: Is this source relevant to my question? Students do not have to check. The primary sources are printed in the book or on the photocopy because someone else judged them relevant.

Reading a source for evidence demands a different approach than reading a source for information. If you now take a look at the Europeana collections: You will find thousand of digitised sources. You cannot even see them all. There is an yet unseen abundance of primary sources available at your fingertips. They are all different. You find postcards, pictures, letters, diaries etc.; unfortunately, you cannot touch them but you can see that they are made of different materials having different sizes and colours.

And maybe more important: There is no fixed story in which the sources are integrated. It is up to you to establish historical significance. You are forced to, or I prefer to say, you are free to think about your questions on the First World War, and then look for answers in the documents. Finally you will write down the answer to your questions and give reasons for telling it the way you do. That is working like a historian, learning about how history is made – and every student can do it.

Putting a pupil in front of such an online collection of primary sources is much alike the situation of a historian in an archive. Yes, this is a difficult situation – but absolutely intriguing…

[Click here for part 2/3]

Moving through time and space – Learning history on the move

Ein Hinweis in eigener Sache: Die Veröffentlichung ist mir Anfang der Ferien durchgegangen, aber der Schulstart ist vielleicht auch ein guter Moment darauf hinzuweisen 😉

Here the link to an article in English about mobile learning in the history classroom:

PDF Download des Artikels (article in English)

My history network

My history network is (going to be) a network of high school students from all over the world. The network is an English speaking ning-community for those who are interested in discussing the different perspectives of history and exchange about all questions concerning history and history teaching. As in most virtual classrooms, there is a chat, forums, databases for photos and videos as well as groups on special interests like ancient or medieval history.

History teachers are invited to join the network and will get administration rights so that they will be responsible for  the invitation of their students and the administration (accept/remove/moderate) of their students‘ activities in the network.

The initiative is proposed by David Hilton who created also the History Teachers group on diigo where you can find besides more than 1000 shared, tagged and commentated links also more information about the idea and the development of the „My history network“-project.

I think this is a great idea and opportunity to propose to the more interested students in your classroom  from which  they can get a lot of benefit.

Teachers wanted

Update (01/10/2009): Relaunch of the website classroom4.eu [does not exist anymore] on October, 10. Democracy & portraiture started.

Nevertheless, we are still looking for teachers and classes to participate in this school year’s classroom4.eu-project:

What is this classroom4.eu-project about?

It’s an internet based project wanting to create a complentary website with (hi)stories from different regions in Europe giving regional perspectives on the big themes treated in the book (see below) and showing the supranational and interregional links in the development of a common European culture.

What is the reason for the project?

A textbook for upper secondary schools about European civilization by the European Academy of Yuste under direction of Abram de Swaan, published in june 2010. For the members of the Academy see also  the  homepage of the Fundación Academia Europea de Yuste in Spain.

What’s innovative about the book?

A very different approach to history, a complete crossover to the national histories we teach until now, restructuring and focussing European history in some artistic and scientific developments, like e.g. democracy, portrait painting, the lens.

How are we going to work?

Interested teachers will work in small groups to pilot the project on different themes. They will use eTwinning for communication and look with their students for relations in their regions to the big themes and investigating, writing and publishing stories on the classroom4.eu-website, maybe in addition also working materials as sources and photos. The language of communication will be English, but students can publish their work in one of six languages of the European Union, e.g. also French, German or Polish. As tool for work and communication we will use a virtual classroom on eTwinning.

How long are we going to work?

The first phase is going to take place from the beginning of the new school year in september 2009 to the publishing of the book in june 2010. Then, we will decide on if and how to continue, hopefully, the project being a success we can turn the website in a long lasting professional tool for history and language teachers from all over Europe. For more information see the homepage of the project.