In the meantime the experimentation in the European schools goes on, thanks to teachers who has taken part in the WORTHY project. Later, between April and May, a questionnaire will be sent to teachers and students to explore the effective application and the satisfaction about the project resources.

The results will be presented during the WORTHY final events that will be organized in Italy, Poland, Germany and Croatia between late May and June 2021.

Meanwhile Happy Easter to all WORTHY readers!

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1. “Studying history is anything but boring”, students' word of honour

                  

The first 10 videos realized by European partner schools students are now online on the WORTHY platform. They are available in the Module 8 of the Augmented Teacher course for registered teachers only (from the Resources menu).
Videos took more time than foreseen, due to interruptions of in-presence lessons for Covid-19 in partner countries, but students of:

• ITE Guido Piovene (Vicenza|IT)
• Kepler-Gymnasium Pforzheim (Pforzheim|DE)
• School Compound The Holy Father John Paul II (Niepolomice|PL),

coordinated by their teachers, worked hard to carry on the work originally planned.

Direct evidences, explanations on how to create a timeline or how to tell war stories through recovered family objects, texts written and performed by students with voice, music and images are just a few content of these first videos, giving a demonstration of activities that can be done by and with students, even online, to increase their interest towards history. 

• Videos are recorded in local languages, but they are all subtitled in English and in almost all the other partner languages.
• Videos are also directly available (for students) in the WORTHY YouTube Channel 

2. A Slam Poetry for WORTHY in Pforzheim (DE)

The 23nd February is a special day in Pforzheim. On this day in the year 1945 the town of Pforzheim was attacked by Allied Forces in an airstrike that destroyed large parts of the city. During the 22 minutes of the attack, 20% of Pforzheim’s population of at the time, 80,000, were killed. This day left tremendous wounds in people’s lives, minds and memories and the scars of these wounds can still be seen at different places throughout town.

• This is the reason Kepler-Gymnasium Pforzheim tries to keep remembrance of this day alive and work on different projects with young people and students in different organisations in town.

In “Slam Poetry for WORTHY” students aged 14-16 received a one day online workshop on writing and performing slam poetry in order to use these skills to create texts that deal with their very personal feelings about war, love and peace after learning about 23nd February 1945.

• The aim then was to use different tools in order to create a digital product that could be presented to the broader public via the WORTHY platform.

Students performed their texts orally and recorded their readings, which were then linked with visuals and background music for an even more dramatic effect. Some of the visuals were taken from Pforzheim’s town archives and show original depictions of the city after the bombing.

The videos created by Kepler-Gymnasium are available on the WORTHY YouTube Channel.

3. Two courses for teachers available on the web platform

                     

Two courses, composed of short online modules, are available on the multilingual WORTHY platform for teachers willing to engage the WORTHY approach. Registering to the platform, the interested educators from all the world, at any time, can take the courses to develop the skills to become an “Augmented teacher” and how to engage with parents more effectively.

The courses – complete with a video case library by partner schools' students and with the certificate creator tool – are available in the “Resources” platform's menu for registered teachers only. Contents were previously tested during the streaming lessons organized in recent months by partners in Italy, Croatia, Poland and Germany.

• “Augmented Teacher” course promotes teaching history as a trasversal skill for citizenship education, strengthening the development of other competencies, such as digital skills, learning to learn, critical thinking, cooperative and collaborative skills.
• “Working with parents” course equips parent educators with the required knowledge, skills and resources to provide professional guidance to parents in how to best support children's development in recovering history interest through the adoption of WORTHY approach.

Both courses focus on increasing the level of participation and achievement of the most unmotivated learners that originate from socially and economically excluded families.

4. The eyes of Milan Polytechnic still on WORTHY 

Measuring the value of cultural digital experience: that’s the main issue of the 2020/2021 edition of the Monitoring Centre on digital innovation of Milan Polytechnic. And in this sense, WORTHY continues to represent an interesting and innovative experience, worthy (the pun could not be more appropriate) of being considered as a case study.

• In the last weeks, the Polytechnic and Municipality of Vicenza organized a series of interviews and focus groups with the project three targets: teachers, students and parents of the Piovene Institute. Surveys were also proposed to Italian, Croatian and German students.
• All the collected information will shine a light on the real meaning of approaching history and culture through digital innovations and on the way this project has affected the teaching process. The way students have faced war events and what kind of new skills they have developed, how parents have collaborated in the collection of material and immaterial artieacts are other interesting items which will come to light.

The results of this surveying process will be made public on the occasion of the Monitoring Center online workshop on April, 15th.

5. Worthy of your time 

• Tiny capsule discovered in Ingersheim appears to have been sent by a soldier during the first world war.

• Found by chance in a book, Olga searched for relatives of the second lieutenant in half of Italy. Thanks to Telenorba, she found her niece Serena in Campania. They will meet as soon as the pandemic allows it: "I would never send this letter: I want to give her the letter in person".

• From the United States, after January 2021 attack on the Capitol:
  "The U.S. is undergoing unprecedented political crises, but the decline of historical study means that many of us may lack perspective on just what is happening to our country".

• A Holocaust survivor who stepped back in to a Nazi ghetto thanks to virtual reality said it "brings it home".

• New virtual and "augmented" reality technology "is a powerful medium that allows you to experience the perspective of another person, and maybe, just maybe, you'll change your own perspective [on] how people experienced life as a Black person".

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