NATURAL EUROPE: Use of Natural History and Environmental Cultural Heritage Digital Content for Education

Natural Europe 2011 summer school, organized by Ellinogermaniki Agogi, aims to strengthen the partnership between natural history museums and schools. The training course will build upon the strengths of learning experiences taking place in natural history museums and link them to school-based education procedures, intending to bridge the gap between formal and non-formal learning. To achieve this, trainees will be familiarized with the use of digital tools for managing the respective cultural heritage digital material.

The summer school schedule will include both lectures and hands-on sessions (workshops) during which the participants will present and share their ideas in a constructive way. Participants will be trained to design their own educational pathways on the basis of inquiry-based educational approach, and align them with resources (i.e. specimens) from the collections of European NHMs. More specifically, the training course will focus on processes of creating innovative learning experiences; use of learning repositories; creation of metadata and research based on metadata; use of learning objects; and significance of social tagging for describing learning pathways and learning objects. One working session will be held at the Natural History Museum of Crete, where attendants will be educated on the use of novel learning tools in field trips.

After the summer school completion, participants will be welcome to produce and share their own educational pathways, by actively participating in the “Natural Europe” community of more than 1300 science teachers who apply inquiry-based techniques in their everyday teaching.