Story of Implementation: Monstrous creatures (EN-CUR-204)

Browsing the list of Europeana Learning Scenarios, I've decided to use Monstrous Creatures (EN-CUR-204) by Natalia Targa, since I felt could be adapted to an information literacy activity for portuguese 5th year students, in ICT class. Due to the differences in age of the students and themes of the class, this scenario was adapted to our specific context rather than straightforwar applied.

Catch Your Monster: An Information Literacy Activity

Our goal: with young students from Agrupamento de Escolas Venda do Pinheiro, use Europeana to foster learning about internet search techniques, use digital communication tools, and develop keyboard skills.

The challenge: let's use Europeana to catch some monsters?

The original scenario was developed as a search and discussion activiy for 19 year old students in lnaguage classes. Our students are 10 year olds, in ICT class. Therefore, the discussion part of the scenario wasn't used, and the links referred were used as a topic starter with our pupils. Furthermore, due to severe time restraints, this implementation had to be done with nine 5th year groups of 26 students, with a 50 minute class for each group.

From an information literacy point of view, using Europeana in an activity enables teachers to deeply explore ICT concepts. Since student's can't rely on search engines autocomplete and autocorrect tools, they have to pay attention to what they write in the search box. It's also a way to show students that online search does not begin and end with Google or other search engines, and that indepedent digital archives can be a powerful way to find targeted results, instead of just using blind trust in a search engine algorithm.

The main theme - monsters, was used to spark student's interest, and also explored, using brainstorming, small concept map. This was done in order for find further keywords, either in portuguese or english, that enabled broader search results.

Europeana use was demonstrated, prior to the search activity. Specifically, pupils learned how to search using single or combined keywords, and filter the results by media type, or cathegory. Information literacy wise, this was a great opportunity to teach kids about tagging information, and what using tags to describe content enable, from search  to machine learning. Also, learning about filtering search results to refine information.

Then, onwards to the task. Groups of pupils (due to materiel constraints, pairs or trios) had to search Europeana using keywords associated with the theme Monsters. From the results, they had to choose three images, and send them to the teacher, correctly referenced. However, they could not download any of the images. They had to use the class email to compose a message, correctly stating the subject of the email, and use the body to paste the direct URL for each of their chosen images. Due to time constraints, we decided not to ask them to identify each chosen image, but they had to correctly state their origin.

Using this scenario, Europeana was a tool for children to develop online search strategies, formal digital communication skills using email, and proficiency in the use of computer interfaces and keyboard writing. This might seem a rather prosaic use of Europena, but keep in mind that pupils who participated in this activiy are very young, and often struggle with the most basic computer use (either because prior to ICT class they rarely used computers, or due to being used to touch-screen mobile device interfaces, that have different interaction principles).

But, beyond and in my view far more important, using Europeana gives the students a perception of the importance of our european common heritage, by viewing and interacting with artifacts representative of different european traditions and histories.

That's essentially it, but the activity has some continuity beyond this time frame. The results chosen by the groups will be used as content for small informatiom tools literacy projects, using text processing, presentations or visual programming with children-friendly computer languages (essentially, Scratch). But that's still in the future.

Tl; DR: version:

- Adaptation of the LS Monstrous creatures (EN-CUR-204) by Natalia Targa to an information literacy activity for portuguese 5th year pupils in ICT class;
- Specific goals, information literacy: develop search techniques, understand keywords, learn to refine search, learn to use search engines, discover digital archives; identify and reference information.
- Specific goals, computer literacey: compose messages using digital communications tools; proficiency in computer interface and peripherals (keyboard, mouse).
- Outcomes: an email message per group, sharing chosen URLs, correctly referenced.

Projetos Finais de TIC: Europeana SOI

This year, we challenged two groups of students to participate in Europeana DSI-IV related activities. Classes 7.º A and 7º B were tasked with creating 3D projects, some of them 3d printed, using Europeana resources as visual references. This project was developed in ICT and History class, in interdisciplinary mode. In History, students learnt about the gothic and romanic periods in European history. That acquired knowledge was translated to physical objects in ICT class, where students learned 3D modeling techniques. Using Europeana resources complemented the project with a deeper knowledge of European heritage.

After learning about the gothic and romanic periods in History class, the next challenge was to discover Europeana. This happened in two stages. First, get to know Europeana and its resources, leraning how to use the internal search engine to search for references pertaining to topics. Second, students were tasked with searching for visual references to create 3d projects.

For this task, students were divided in groups and issued guidelines. Items searched and chosen had to be relevant to the project (specifically, romanic or gothic architectural or decorative elements); if possible, find more than one image of the same chosen object (in this, Europeana is not very helpful); choose elements adequate to modeling skills. After choosing visual references, students sent to the teacher an email with information about the chosen model. In the email, they had to attach a copy of chosen images, and write a text with information about the title, type of resource, original archive, copyright status and Europeana URL. This could also be done using a document template, but ICT class in Portugal has a very limited yearly time. Email allowed us to gain time during the search phase to have more time for the modelling phase.

Here's a 3D printed model created from an Europeana reference...

and the 3D model created by our pupils.

The next phase was 3D modelling chosen projects. Each group worked with their preferred 3D modellig tool. They could choose to use Tinkercad, a primitive-base modeller, or Sketchup, a surface subdivision tool. This is the longest part of the project. We dedicated 3 to 4 classes for this phase, in order for our students to have the time to take their project as far as they could. Still, this was also the most problematic phase, for two reasons.

The first, running the risk of repetition, is time. ICT class in Portugal can be organized in weekly 50 minute slots on a semester, or yearly 50 minute fortnightly slots. Our school is organized yearly, wich meant that classes are bi-weekly. Each month has two ICT classes. This makes it a bit difficult to manage projects. Also, a very low number of classes means that students don't have much time to focus on their projects, and create complex 3D models.

The second problem is with Europeana itself. Its a great resource, but not very suitable for our specific project. In order to recreate objects in 3D, students have to have a good grasp of the shapes to model. They need several visual references, from different viewpoints, from the same object. Europeana is not optimized for this. Its visual archives stem directly from their sources, and in case of photographs, generally each one is about a specific object or theme. Something that makes complete sense for activities related to History or social sciences, but not in our case, where Europeana is used as a referential image database for 3D models. Still, this kind of 3D projects focus on heritage as means to learn more about specific subjects using ICT tools. In spite of its drawbacks (for us), Europeana gives us an amazing ability in this kind of projects: make students aware of our common european heritage. This is why we like to use Europeana, and not a common online search.

This activity was organized on The Romanic, in Plastic Europeana learning scenario. There, we detail learning goals, key competences, specific Europeana resources and structure of the activity.

Here are some images of 3D models and printed projects.