EPICS: e-learning platform for digital heritage

Start 24/11/11 10:00
Einde 24/11/11 12:00

Both in education and in the heritage sector, there is an increasing need for ICT instruments for cultural heritage education. This need is stimulated further by the trend to digitize, increasing availability of digital heritage and the growing use of online platforms and digital blackboards in classrooms.  EPICS is an IBBT-ICON project that answers to this need through the development of an e-learning platform for digital cultural heritage in Flanders.

EPICS has developed modules for the gathering, manipulating and distribution of digital cultural heritage such as documents, pictures, sound & video fragments from museums, libraries and other cultural heritage institutions. The platform moulds all this material into good didactic materials to be used in schools.
Teachers can use the demonstration platform to develop digital lessons and share them with their students through different channels (website, digital blackboard, mobile). The demonstrator makes use of the archive, library and image database of the Museum In Flanders Fields in Ieper and enables students to follow into the footsteps of the 11 year old Jeanne Mesdom through a mobile route leading them through Ieper in 1914.
EPICS of course lead to enhanced expertise in the field of user centered research, the legal framework, the enrichment of digital cultural heritage with didactic content and technology. Additionally, the project positively effects heritage education and the (re )use of digital cultural heritage in general. Therefore, the project partners hope to valorize the EPICS-platform into a generic platform for the educational and cultural heritage sector.

The EPICS demo event will explain the general framework of the project, demonstrate the EPICS-platform and the ?Verhalenbouwer? (Story Builder) and present the technical innovative components developed in this project.