Definitely, 2018 was a big year for the ONLAAH project! In March we had the general meeting of TANA- TransArea Network Africa, in Egypt, on the beautiful city of Aswan.

We presented our projects to our DAI colleagues and start filming some videos for the MOOC, with the team from MomentMal TV. We filmed a general introduction to the course and some interviews with DAI researchers working in Africa.

These first movies are very important to us because they will establish the ‘formula’ for the MOOC visual and the way we approach learning.

A couple of months later, in May, we meet again in Berlin to finish the movies with Michèle Dinies, on Pollen analysis, and Philipp von Rummel, on the TANA network.

Later in September, we were in Barcelona to present ONLAAH, at the “24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologist: Reflecting Futures”. We organized the session 481, “Traditional and (Alternative) New Media: Different Ways to Communicate upon Archaeology”, where apart of ONLAAH many other projects related with new ways of communicated and related with the public were explored.

In our presentation titled: Why Archaeology Matters? Digging up Archaeology’s Role in Modern Societies”, we summarized our project trajectory and results till now, our main goals to the future and the next steps to take us there.

Finally, in November, we travel to Neuchâtel to meet with ONLAAH founder, Matthieu Honegger and present our project on the DARIAH- Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, workshop at Neuchâtel University.

The workshop was very interesting with many research projects from Switzerland and around the world, using digital resources apply to Humanities.

Author: Sofia Fonseca

This was when it all began! Sofia Fonseca, from Teiduma, together with the Jörg Linstädter, from DAI and Bruno Bicho, from the ICArEHB– University of the Algarve (UAlg), organized a meeting in Faro on the 19^th of December of 2016. There were also Matthieu Honegger, from the University of Neuchatel and Jonathan Haws, from the University of Louisville. The idea was to bring together different colleagues and institutions working in Africa to start creating the MOOC structure and the future of the online platform. What would we like to have in our first course? Which African colleagues we would contact to join the project? Which main objectives would the platform have? And finally, what were the main challenges to overcome?

It was a very important moment with the partners presenting their different projects in Africa and brainstorming together to answer the questions that always arrive at the beginning of any endeavour!

Sofia Fonseca started the presentations with an introduction to “E-Learning and the future of archaeological and heritage education in Africa”. Nuno Bicho, presented the ICArEHB project “The Massingir region in Mozambique”, followed by Jörg Linstädter and “The German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and it’s projects in Africa”.

Jonathan Haws made a presentation regarding his project on “The coastal Archaeology in Mozambique” and Matthieu Honegger, took us to Sudan to meet the “Archaeological project in Kerma (Northern Sudan): Research, valorization and protection of the cultural heritage”. Finally, João Cascalheira ended the meeting with “Learning from stone tools in Africa: the example of Mozambique”.

We had good participation from the public that raised interesting questions and some doubts about online education.

It is always interesting to see how new technologies or new ways of doing, may raise suspicions, many of them very reasonable, and how throughout the process, we will have to answer and solve some them.

Author: Sofia Fonseca

In June 2016, the ONLAAH project was presented, for the first time to the public, at the SAFA, Society of Africanists archaeologists, international conference, that was held in Toulouse.

lt all started some months before, as an idea, but we wanted to have feedback from our colleagues and from students regarding our proposal. How would the community respond and how much interest a project like ours could raise were among some of our main concerns.

During the meeting, we talked with many colleagues from Africa and around the world, and with African students attending the conference. For our delight, all of them showed interest and curiosity regarding the project. We have to say the most enthusiastic were the students giving us the most positive feedback and interest in the initiative.

The general reaction makes us believe that we are on the right track!

Author: Sofia Fonseca