A Permanent Project of Audiovisual Cultural Heritage at the University of Cantabria: “Recovering Utopias”

Abstract

“Reclaiming Utopias” was a project that was launched in the Department of Education at Universidad de Cantabria in 2012, later joined by the Department of Philosophy and Letters, which shares the university building. The project uses a series of thematic showcases to expose and didactically explain devices and technologies used over time to train students in different educational and historiographical disciplines. In addition to overcoming the technological obsolescence of the various devices on display, the objective was to demonstrate a wide range of educational proposals and strategies that have been utilized to respond to the “utopia” that machines are better for teaching and learning. Above all, current and future students can coherently consider, in a structured way, various technological initiatives that have been taking place over time, through the descriptions in the article. The initiative’s methodology was based on reviving old and obsolete devices that were used in classrooms decades ago from building attics to establishing an intergenerational dialogue with current and future students on the tradition of ICT in education. The results were a permanent exhibition in the classroom area of the Inter-Department of the Universidad de Cantabria that serves each year as a didactic experience for the subjects involved with ICT in the Department of Education through the displayed artifacts. Discussing the proposal results is of interest and concern for the Universidad de Cantabria for the conversation on its university heritage, and it also has a teaching component, from a technological perspective, with various instruments in need of being explained and put in value and that join the trend of Spanish Universities in a field of growing interest today due to the deep cultural and social changes occurring in the meaning of Technology with the digital “implosion” in all educational processes.