The shared histories event at the National Library of New Zealand (Wellington) delivered beyond showcasing five outstanding school projects.

It provided the opportunity for all involved in making the Programme the success it is to come together, exchange and evaluate how far SharedHistories has come since its inception back in November 2013.

Shared Histories was indeed launched mid November 2013 on a beautiful Saturday morning that saw more than twenty New Zealand teachers from around the country gather at the University of Auckland. On that occasion, they met for the first time over twenty teachers from the Amiens Rectorat, France, through video conference. On that day, partnerships were formed and promises to explore ways to work together on commemorative projects to remember the First World War were made.

Since the Sharedhistories platform (sharedhistories.com) has been developed to give these long distance partnerships a ‘homebase’ and enable them to capture the milestones of their project development as they happened .

The National Library event, kindly hosted by Winston Roberts, Senior Advisor, Library of NZ, marked a significant stage in the existence of the Programme.

Students and teachers from five different schools gathered to present their inquiry process and the projects that have been central to their learning, across areas of the curriculum for the last year.

All teams shared their journey with eloquence. Their engagement and their learning shone through their slides or videos (Slides and videos for each project will be published in subsequent entries]
The audience was wowed.

Representatives from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, of the French Embassy in Wellington, as well as School principals as well as members of the public interested in the programme all showed their appreciation and sized the opportunity to engage students with questions.

The evening culminated with a video link with the French partner schools, After an introduction by the Recteur and the Director of International Relationships of the Amiens regional education area, project partners from across the globe were re-united! Some of them had met as trips have already taken place, others were about to meet for the first time, and there was no doubt at the emotions shared there that SharedHistories has achieved one of the goals it set to achieve: to support meaningful, long lasting relationships.