Every museum object holds an untold story.
Untold Stories is an open curriculum for secondary school classrooms. Students pick a museum object, find the voice history left out, and bring that person to life with generative AI — as a reel, a comic, or a playable simulation. Built on evidence. Checked for dignity. Teaching critical AI literacy every step of the way.
History has more than one narrator.
Museum labels can only say so much. The maker, the servant, the child, the trader — the people around an object often go unmentioned. Meanwhile, generative AI has arrived in classrooms faster than the training to use it well. Untold Stories puts the two together: students recover a plausible missing perspective, with AI as the instrument and evidence as the rule.
Multiperspective history
Multiperspectivity is a proven but underused strategy for inclusion and critical thinking (Observatory on History Teaching in Europe, 2022). Teachers want it; resources and training are scarce. This curriculum makes it doable in a normal classroom.
First-generation AI students
Today's students will meet AI at school, at work, and in life — most without any formal training. Working about and with AI on real history teaches them where it helps, where it hallucinates, and how to verify.
Empathy as a skill
Taking the perspective of someone distant in time builds the same muscle as understanding someone across the street: open-mindedness, cultural empathy, and the habits of democratic conversation.
A classroom-ready curriculum. Open to everyone.
Everything is designed for real lessons: printable canvasses, timed activities, prompts students copy-paste, and quality checks that catch AI's mistakes before they ship.
Four-phase curriculum
EXPLORE → VALIDATE → DRAFT → CREATE: from picking an object in the museum to publishing a finished story. ~7 hours of guided group work.
Printable canvasses
One A3 worksheet per phase. This website mirrors each canvas step by step, so screen and paper always agree.
Copy-paste prompt library
Every AI prompt pre-written, one click to copy. Students spend their effort on judgement and evidence — not prompt syntax.
Built-in CHECK panels
Non-skippable verification moments in every phase: time & place, stereotypes, evidence, dignity. Catching AI's inventions is part of the work.
Three creation pathways
A reel, a comic book, or a playable simulation — teams pick the format that fits their story, not the other way round.
Teacher bootcamp
Three online sessions with classroom practice in between. Two cohorts: partner schools first, then schools across the EU. In development.
Four phases. One untold story.
Each phase has a canvas, clear timing, prompts students copy-paste into AI tools, and CHECK panels that catch problems before they ship.
EXPLORE
Pick a museum object, investigate it, ask whose story is missing, and generate a first AI character image.
VALIDATE
Build an evidence foundation around your character (object, context, person), then choose a strong story angle.
DRAFT
Pick a medium (reel, comic, simulation), draft your story panels or game flow, run the "Then, Not Now" test.
CREATE
Anchor character & style, build one scene, save the recipe, scale to the rest, polish and publish.
Built for classrooms — useful well beyond them.
The project serves four groups, from the teachers who run it to the wider community that adapts it.
Cross-curricular teachers
History, technology, and language teachers who want one project that genuinely bridges their subjects — with hands-on strategies and AI literacy training included.
Secondary school students
Teams of 2–4 explore a museum object, ask whose story is missing, and build historical empathy, critical thinking, and AI literacy by making something real.
School leaders & administrators
A concrete, ethics-first example of GenAI in education — practical evidence for policy decisions about responsible AI use at school level.
The wider education community
Museum & heritage educators, teacher trainers, researchers, and policymakers: every resource is open and adaptable, from canvasses to bootcamp materials.
Three countries. Four organisations.
A small-scale partnership between two secondary schools, a teacher-training organisation, and an EU partner school — building a curriculum that's classroom-tested before it ships.
