• After the intellectual outputs' development in the first part of the 3-year-long project (methodological guidelines, lesson plans, platform, courses for teachers), it was time for public presentations, staff training, external teachers involvement. All these activities were foreseen to be organized in-presence, instead they had to be delivered online, with great difficulties, due to restrictions imposed by governments and mandatory online school lessons, that have suddenly overwhelmed teachers.

1. Project public launches: 92 very enthusiastic participants

In one of the most difficult period of this crazy 2021, the WORTHY partnership managed to organize the four project's public launches foreseen, even if two of them were online, due to the new restrictions suddenly imposed by local governments. 

• Expected to be in-presence, in fact, at the last minute the events in Niepolomice-Poland (October 20) and Pforzheim-Germany (October 21) had to be transformed into online meetings, totalizing respectively 17 and 15 participants.
• Despite great difficulties, the events were organized in presence in Vicenza-Italy (September 29) and in Osjiek-Croatia (October 20 and November 26), in front of respectively 29 and 31 persons.

The 92 participants in all were mostly teachers, school leaders, staff responsible for school libraries and ICT, and adult educators. The public launches in fact were hands-on seminars dedicated for the school sector, in order to present the WORTHY project's vision and its outputs, as resources available for teachers and students:

• the web platform (WorldWars.eu)
• the lesson plans
• the courses for teachers. 

In general participants showed a strong interest in the project and in taking part of it. This means that schools actually need a new approach to teach history and innovative methods to learn it.
And WORTHY wants to fulfil this real need of teachers and students. 

2. The courses for teachers: streaming lessons

After the public launches held in the four partner countries in Europe, in order to involve as many teachers as possible in the experimentation phase, two editions of the courses for teachers have already been organized, in Italy and in Germany.

• Originally foreseen to be delivered using a blended-learning method (face-to-face and pre-recordered modules), in both countries the two courses  - “Augmented teachers” and “Working with parents” - had to be held online only, due to the worsening of the Covid-19 pandemic (and most likely they could be entirely online in Croatia and Poland too, where partners are organizing the streaming lessons in January 2021).
• In Italy more than 20 teachers attended the three online lessons and 15 of them already completed the courses with the practical task necessary to get the certificates. They all were very enthusiastic and appreciated a lot the project and the courses. 

Now the Municipality of Vicenza will put the works all together in a document to be shared among teachers, in order to stimulate new ideas, share opinions and create the Augmented Teachers community.
In Germany, Kepler-Gymnasium Pforzheim have already held two up of three online lessons. They focused on possible activities that could enrich the WORTHY platform and bring together the different institutions (town hall, cultural affairs office, schools, youth organisations, churches). Living in a multicultural society, in Pforzheim they planned on using the experiences of students whose ancestors had been former enemies and link these to the present.

3. Pupils exchanges: thinking about alternative solutions

WORTHY project foreseen pupils’ exchanges based on mobility between four schools involved in the project. But unfortunately trips are not possibile at the moment, due to the worsening of the pandemic. 
Anyway the WORTHY partnership is already thinking about alternative activities, still based on exchange, altough remotely and without mobility between countries.

Following the ideas that school partners are considering:

• Portfolio and online meeting - All the school groups prepare a portfolio about them to present others, producing artefacts to be uploaded to the WorldWars.eu platform. Finally a short online meeting of groups will be organized, during which all the groups will introduce themselves.
• Contest - Each partner country can organize a contest, whose results could then be shared during an online meeting and on the platform.
• Poster, collage - It could be an image or a poster, whose space would be filled in by the groups from all the partners, relating to the WWI or WWII events. For example: WORTHY logo - Each group fills a part of it, a fragment of a particular color. As a result we would get a “W” letter made up of traces of war from different countries, symbolizing that all the people suffer the same way, showing that those tragic events are our common heritage.
• Riddle - A group chooses a photo of a place, person etc. related to the events of the WWI or WWII and sends it to another group. The second group’s task is to find out what the place is / who the person is etc. and also to search the history behind it. Then the groups meet online and share their findings. The results have to be shared on the platform.

4. WORTHY Short mobile films competition in Niepolomice (Poland) 

Niepolomice Commune and the School Compound Holy Father John Paul II in Niepolomice (Poland) announced the Short Mobile Film Competition “Traces of World War I and II in the commune of Niepolomice”.
The competition is aimed at students of schools in the Niepołomice commune. 

Its main goals are:

• to encourage search for traces of World War I and II in the Niepołomice commune;
• to encourage creative and artistic activity and learning the history of the homeland;
• to develop the ability to study traces of the past;
• to deepen the knowledge of World War I and II, especially of interesting places and people related to those events;
• to encourage research related to the family history;
• to acquire the ability to document traces of history using film recordings;
• to build an intergenerational dialog and create new perspectives for the study of history through new technologies;
• to develop the ability to share experiences and thoughts on how history influenced the fate of the family, homeland, Poland and the world.

Proposed five topics to choose from:

• Heroes of everyday life
• Traces of war in the Niepołomice commune
• Residents and their everyday life in the Niepołomice commune during World War I or II
• Memorial sites
• The Niepołomice Forest as "a witness to the war"

Stage I – at schools, it will help to choose the best movies to the stage II – at the municipal level. 

The deadline for submitting works for this stage is March 31, 2021. The results will be announced by April 15, 2021.
Winners of the first three places will be awarded with electronic equipment. The prizes will be sponsored by the Niepołomice Commune and the European Union as part of the WORTHY project.

The awards will be presented during a conference scheduled for May 2021.

5. Milan Polytechnic still interested in WORTHY 

After the honourable mention at the "Gianluca Spina award for digital innovation in cultural heritage and activities", the Milan Polytechnic - one of the most outstanding Universities in Europe - keeps on focusing its interest in WORTHY. 

• The Municipality of Vicenza is a member of the Monitoring Centre on digital innovation since 2016 and within the framework of the 2020/2021 session, one of the activities regards WORTHY's future developements, with a specific attention to the user experience topic. 

This means that WORTHY is worthy of a thorough investigation on its peculiarities and potentialities, involving technologies in themselves but also the role of students, teachers and parents. 

• Equally important is the way the project improves their knowledge and skills. 

This will be another great opportunity of disseminating the value of WORTHY among researchers, museum directors, cultural institutions and digital service providers.

We'll keep you updated on the next steps.

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