The Didactics work group was established during an ICARUS meeting in Poznań (Poland) in June 2011. It currently consists of 36 members (researchers and professors of Archival Sciences, Paleography, Diplomatics and Medieval History) from 15 European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Hungary) and 3 tutors. Several participants of the Didactics group work specifically on theory and methodology of teaching with digital technologies. The ground seemed fertile to constitute a team of European scholars, tutors and archivists and build a solid digital learning environment involving as many partners as possible.
The Didactics group has been focused on a variety of goals:
- Training university students and graduates by teaching Diplomatics, Paleography and Medieval History using digital technologies as Monasterium.Net portal and MOM-CA software.
- Encouraging the physical mobility of students and teachers throughout Europe in order to foster a profitable exchange of experiences and skills.
- Giving graduates who work in the archival field theoretical and practical gears to create and manage digital archives in Monasterium.Net.
- Carrying out detailed didactic projects involving as many ICARUS members as possible as well as people and/or institutions outside ICARUS.
The University of Naples Federico II (UNINA) coordinates the educational activities of the ICARUS Didactics Group in the person of Antonella Ambrosio, lecturer at the department of Humanities and teacher in Palaeography and Diplomatics.
Check out our reports! 2014 I – 2013 II – 2013 I – 2012 II – 2012 I – 2011 II
Achievements
1. International e-learning course in Palaeography, History and Diplomatics
The first interesting and ambitious project of the ICARUS Didactics Group is the setting up of an international e-learning course in Diplomatics.
The course is still at the planning stage but it will be developed in the framework of Monasterium.Net.
During the workshop in Einsiedeln 2012 (within the Icarus meeting) the following speakers presented several didactic units proposals for the international e-learning course:
Nicolás Avila Seoane (Universidad Complutense de Madrid); Susana Cabezas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid); Adele Di Lorenzo (University of Siena/Arezzo); Francesca Klein (State Archives of Florence); Dominique Stutzmann (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Testes – Paris) who also presented the proposals of the following scholars: Olivier Guyotjeannin (École Nationale des Chartes); Paul Bertrand (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes); Sébastien Barret (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes).
2. Workshops
The ICARUS Didactics work group meets every six months in connection with Icarus Meeting, during which members have the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas on the activities and results.
Colmar - FR (Archives Départementale du Haut Rhin, 17 November 2014) – Workshop #7
Madrid - ES (National Historical Archive, 25 November 2013) – Workshop #6
Have a look at agenda and report.
Dublin – IE (Trinity College, 25 June 2013) – Workshop #5
Agenda, report and the questionnaires (questionnaire1 and questionaire2).
Bratislava – SK (State Archives Bratislava, 19 November 2012) – Workshop #4
Check out the agenda.
Einsiedeln – CH (Einsiedeln Abbey, 26 June 2012) - Workshop #3
The agenda.
Marburg – DE (Hessian State Archive Marburg, 22 November 2011) – Workshop #2
See our report.
Poznań – PL (Archidiocesan Archive Poznań, 6 June 2011) – Workshop #1
Have a look at the agenda and the report.
3. National Courses
Another fundamental target of the Didactics group is to promote the concept of academic courses implementing MOMCA and the portal Monasterium.Net. Several European academic teachers who joined the Didactics Group have held this kind of courses in Diplomatics and the Archival Sciences since 2009:
Academic year 2009/2010:
- Georg Vogeler, University of Munich, Germany;
- Adelheid Krah, University of Wien/IOeG, Austria.
Academic year 2011/2012:
- Antonella Ambrosio and Maria Rosaria Falcone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy;
- Dominique Stutzmann, École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France;
- Adelheid Krah, University of Wien/IOeG, Austria;
- Ludmila Sulitková, University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně, Czech Republic;
- Tillmann Lohse, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany.
During the Icarus Didactics Group Workshop in Bratislava 2012 (within the Icarus Meeting) presentations of didactic experiences using MOMCa and/or the portal Monasterium.net took place.
The speakers were:
- Tillmann Lohse, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany;
- Dominique Stutzmann, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes – Paris, France;
- Adelheid Krah, University of Wien/IOeG, Austria;
- Antonella Ambrosio, Maria Rosaria Falcone, Davide De Angelis, University of Naples Federico II.
Academic year 2012/2013:
- Antonella Ambrosio and Maria Rosaria Falcone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy;
- Adelheid Krah, Daniel Jeller, University of Wien/IOeG, Austria;
During the Icarus Didactics Group Workshop in Dublin 2013 (within the Icarus Meeting) the presentations of didactic experiences using MOMCa and/or the portal Monasterium.net took place.
The speakers were:
- Maria Rosaria Falcone, University of Naples Federico II;
- Daniel Jeller, ICARus/University of Wien/IOeG.
Academic year 2013/2014:
- Antonella Ambrosio and Maria Rosaria Falcone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy;
- Adelheid Krah, University of Wien/IOeG, Austria.
During the Icarus Didactics Group Workshop in Madrid 2013 (within the Icarus Meeting) a presentations of the new MOMCa Tools took place.
The speakers were:
- Georg Vogeler, University of Graz;
- Jochen Graf, University of Cologne;
- André Streicher, University of Cologne;
- Antonella Ambrosio, University of Naples Federico II.
Academic year 2014/2015:
- Antonella Ambrosio and Maria Rosaria Falcone, University of Naples Federico II, Italy.
4. Other Didactics Activities
- June 2012: Within the EDU-ENArC workshop “La rete per gli archivi storici europei: dagli archivi ecclesiastici al portale archivistico europeo APEnet” hosted by the Scuola Normale di Pisa, UNINA organized a 6 hours training on charters in MOMCa. Coordinator, Antonella Ambrosio; Teacher, Maria Rosaria Falcone.
- February 2013: Antonella Ambrosio and Georg Vogeler gave a lecture titled “Il progetto Monasterium.NET” at University of Pisa (IT), within the seminar on Digital Culture of prof. Enrica Salvatori (University of Pisa). The seminars on “Cultura Digitale di Informatica Umanistica” at Pisa are also available as podcasts on the portal iTunes University. Have a look at the video of the lecture!
The lecture has been organized in collaboration with ICARus.
- March 2013: Antonella Ambrosio, Manuel Salamanca López, Maria Rosaria Falcone dissussed at UNINA on a new ICARus Didactics sub-project, titled “Distance Teaching for Latin America”.
During the meeting the discussion focused on the following themes:
Manuel Salamanca López, “Possibilità e limiti della formazione virtuale nel campo della Scienza e della Tecnica Storiografica: alcuni esempi concreti: REDCID (Moodle, Webinar e Joomla); (Claroline)”; Maria Rosaria Falcone, “Utilizzo di Monasterium.net e di MOM-CA per la descrizione dei documenti storici”; Antonella Ambrosio – Manuel Salamanca López, “Eventualità di un progetto che riguardi l’insegnamento della Diplomatica con MOM-Ca indirizzato a studenti residenti in America Latina”.
The sub-project is organized in collaboration with ICARus and the startup of project will be in January 2014.
5. Supporting archival operators in the start-up of digital archives in Monasterium.Net
In order to transfer the expertise gained in the field of digitization UNINA supports in close contact with MOM-CA Technical Development group and ICARUS with a supplementary action all the institutions that intend to create a digital archive in Monasterium.Net. This backup activity, led through an e-learning training and the organization of meetings, conveys all the necessary skills for the management of a digital archive.
UNINA has overseen the start-up of several Italian digital archives:
- Diocesan Historical Archive of Reggio Calabria-Bova
- State Archive of Potenza
- State Archive of Reggio Calabria (organization phase)
In addition, UNINA promotes two Spanish ones, the Municipal Historical Archive of Escalona and the Archive of the Cathedral of Cuenca in Spain. Actually, the creation of these two digital archives was possible thanks to the cooperation between Italy and Spain within the ENArC special program Linking The Neighborhood.
6. Learning Community
In 2011 UNINA sponsored the launch of the Learning Community within the ENArC project: its imperative goal is the training of an expert for historical documentation, a professional with the necessary skills for the job, able to approach our international digital reality with the required gears.
Every participant becomes part of a real community. They regularly meet to take part in training seminars, workshops, internships on the nature and composition of monastic archives, digitization, metadata processing, Xml encoding, EditMOM documents description and Monasterium research data. Everyone is informed via electronic newsletter about the events taking place at UNINA and any other kind of meetings (summer schools, stages and work proposals) in Italy and abroad. So far more than 70 subscribers, PhD candidates, graduates and students who already learned the basics of Paleography, Diplomatics and Archival Sciences, have joined the community. They are mostly Italians. However, it is already planned a further expansion with the help of the ICARUS Didactics group that will allow a larger participation from abroad.
7. Students Mobility
Expertise and skill exchange cannot be confined to a virtual confrontation. Indeed, ICARUS empirically promotes the mobility of students and teachers through specific programs for a more profitable interchange.
In February 2012 the partnership between ICARUS and UNINA gave Vera Schwarz, a student of the Master in Library and Archival Sciences and Methodology in Research at the University of Naples, the chance to attend ICARUS Spring School with a project of a digital edition of Neapolitan charters.
In November 2012 Davide De Angelis participated in the workshop of the Didactics Group in Bratislava and presented on this occasion his experience as a student in the course of Diplomatic Antonella Ambrosio at Unina.
8. Publications, resources, presentations.
Within the activities of the Didactics Work Group UNINA deals not only with the coordination and collaborates with the others members regarding the sub-projects, but also supports the members in promoting their activities with MOM-Ca. Below a list of several recent publications of our members which is also visible on the new section of our website (in some cases the papers are available as pdfs via download).
Collaborate with us!
Any teacher, researcher or scholar interested in the aforementioned subjects and working at a university or any other cultural institution, member or not yet member of ICARUS, can join the group. Our online application form
