IWitness: Personal Holocaust Video Testimonials

I learned about iWitness from @ghkcole from #sschat. IWitness is a website for teachers and students that has over 1,000 Holocaust video testimonials of survivors and witnesses. This collection is just a small part of the collection maintained by the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation Institute, established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg.

 

This is a wonderful resource for schools teaching about the Holocaust. According to iWitness, “Students have the opportunity to use technology to become more active learners while encountering survivors and other eyewitnesses talking about their experiences before, during and after the Holocaust. This application empowers them to participate in their own learning by providing them with the tools to think critically, investigate, develop projects, analyze, and collaborate with others.”  I plan on having my students go to the website and do a personal history search a couple nights before I teach about the Holocaust. Students will then come in to discuss, share, and reflect on what they learned about the Holocaust.  You can watch a short video demonstration of IWitness here.