MATERIAL FOR SCHOOLS

Why (digital) media?

As an example that highlights the relevance of (digital) media for learning and teaching, we refer to the Austrian national curriculum, which defines ten so-called “teaching principles” that can be understood as principles to be included and taught in all subjects. One of these principles is media competency, which is defined as encompassing

the analytical examination of the causes, effects and forms of media communication and the reality shaped by the media, [making] it possible to reflect on the various interests that determine the selection and content of information and the form in which it is conveyed, [creating] awareness of the fact that political judgement is largely formed through the media, [enabling] creative use of media technologies and [encouraging] the creation of media content in order to express one’s own interests and to participate more fully in society and its further development.

 

While this curricular requirement calls for the use of media and digital tools and practices in general, we believe that newspapers in particular are a kind of media that warrants intensive use and scrutiny in educational contexts.

Why newspapers for the classroom?

Digitalised newspapers in particular offer an excellent starting point for the inclusion of digital humanities methods into history lessons, especially due to the following facts:

• Pupils should already be familiar with newspapers as media and as source of information.
• In the Austrian case in particular, thanks to the efforts of the National Library, many digitised historical newspapers are easily and freely available online. The same is true for many other countries.
• Many web-based tools allow further analysis of the texts in a second step, without having to install additional software.

Full lesson plans, article collections and worksheets

In addition to general information on working with digitized newspapers, we provide collections of articles on specific topics and corresponding worksheets as well as plans for entire teaching modules. The material is specifically aimed at history lessons as defined in Finnish, French or Austrian curriculum - but there are also sufficient links to other subjects and cross-sectional topics. We hope that you will find the material appealing and that you will be able to incorporate or adapt it in your lessons! Here you can find lesson plans that have been translated into English: