Together with the VPRO broadcasting company and the VGN, the Dutch History Teachers Association, EUROCLIO is working on a new exciting project In Europe at School – History Caught in the Act. The project will result in an educational toolkit based on the follow-up of the VPRO series In Europe, made with Geert Mak, the author of the books on which both series are made. The new series will focus on the question what changed in Europe during the last twenty years.
As part of the project, students will make their own documentary on a topic from the series, which means they will have to do their own research on history and learn to communicate it to others. There will be lesson plans for the topics and tutorials on how to make documentaries. There are history lessons on the specific topic to show the continuity and change in, of example, migration. Furthermore there are lessons to show how to find this topic locally and how to research it in order to produce a documentary. The produced documentaries are shared with a partner school from a different country, which means that the students will see the same topic, but from an entirely different perspective.
The first meeting with VPRO’s Educational Coordinator, Odette Toeset, and the EUROCLIO authors of the lesson plan, Daniel Bernsen, Harri Beobide and Marian Heesen, took place this month at the EUROCLIO Secretariat in The Hague. The team agreed on a structure that could be used for all topics, and decided on the topics and key questions for the first two lessons. We are looking forward to work more with our partner and authors on this creative project.
The first lessons of the toolkit will be ready when the series airs in the end of 2019.
