As Facing History teachers we know the power of people’s stories and using these stories in a way that provides students with the tools they need to make decisions about historical events and people and apply that knowledge to themselves and their community. One way to bring your lesson literally to life is to use IWitness this online tool was created by the USC Shoah Foundation. It is an online application for educators and students, giving them access to watch, search, and learn from over 1,000 video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.
When teaching the Holocaust it is not always possible to have a survivor or witness to visit your classroom and now teachers (and their students) have access to over a thousand testimonies including many survivors allowing you to enhance your current unit and lessons making them come alive. For so many of our students the events of the Holocaust seem so far away but IWitness brings these events right into your classroom and students’ experience is enhanced and their learning becomes more personal. For me Facing History and Shoah have always been connected. My first Facing History workshop was the 10 year anniversary of Shindler’s List. Fast forward to the Spring of 2009 when Shoah contacted me to pilot a lesson on liberator Howard Cwick, which lead to an offer to participate in their first Master Teacher Program in 2010. At that time I was a teacher in the Humanitas program at Carson High School (now a Pilot school – the Academy of Medical Arts @ Carson). Iwas first introduced to IWitness when I attended my second summer training with USC Shoah Foundation Master Teacher program 2011?. During my first summer I had the honor of working with testimony to create an introductory lesson to a unit on Eugenics which I created after attending a seminar “Race and Membership in the United States: The Eugenics Movement.” for an 11th grade US History class These combined experiences convinced me that having access to IWitness would greatly enhance my Facing History units and lessons. In addition to using IWitness to introduce the American Eugenics Movement unit, I have used it as a culminating project for a labor and immigration unit. For this assignment I created my own activity using “activity builder”. Students completed the activity which required them to search for testimony of witnesses their own age (even their own birthday if possible) who immigrated to the US and then create a video entitled “Coming to America” which they posted and then students responded. I was able to grade each step of the activity and give immediate feedback. Once again seeing and hearing the stories of ordinary (yet extraordinary) immigrants allowed my students many of them immigrants themselves to have a shared connection and bring what they had been learning in class to life.
I plan to continue to use IWitness in more of my courses because it enhances what they are learning in their texts, brings the history alive and then allows them to create their own work product to share. I will be working with our 10th grade team (French, Intro to Bio-tech, Geometry, World History & English) to create a lesson on Rescuers in which they use The Courage of Le Chambon Reading from Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior Resource Book as the basis for the lesson. This reading is very powerful and in my experience is story students connect with because it involves school age children. With IWitness students can search for people directly involved and hear their story.
There are many other connections I see with my current Facing History teaching. Another IWitness lesson idea is to create a lesson with my 11th grade team that looks at the US Civil Rights Movement, I would also like to create an Information Quest using Facing History’s Scope and Sequence, the design principle to Facing History’s pedagogy.
Who should use IWitness? I believe that IWitness is a great tool for any teacher at any grade level. Due to the graphic nature of some of the testimony and photographs I recommend that elementary and middle school teachers create activities geared towards their students. If you are thinking about ways to connect with other teachers on your campus IWitness offers many ways to create interdisciplinary lessons. You can team up the traditional combination of English and History but you can include an Art teacher, Foreign Language, Math and even Science teacher into the mix. In California most students are introduced to the Holocaust in Middle School with the reading of Anne Frank and then again in 10th Grade World History but the testimonies provided on IWitness work in many subjects including English, Government, Economics, Geography, US History, Digital Media to name a few.
Why should you use IWitness? Beyond enhancing your Facing History lessons or units it is a great way to incorporate technology and 21st Century skills further into your classroom. No matter which activity you introduce to your students you will be able to monitor their progress, provide feedback and grade all online. Most activities touch on all areas of Bloom’s Taxonomy particularly evaluation and synthesis and students can peer review each other. Finally, the IWitness support team is very helpful in case you or your students run into any issues. Finally most of the strategies that are used by the IWitness team for their activities might be ones that you are familiar with due to your participation in Facing History seminars and workshops, including found poetry, responding to text / images, Text to…Strategy. Additionally it meets the new Common Core English Language and History standards.
What skills do you need? The ability to follow directions, have a basic understanding of computers and a keen thirst for knowledge (I will also add from my own experience patience and the ability to laugh when making mistakes). iWitness has made the process very easy for teachers and students to use. They have created activities that you can assign your students, provided you with introductory videos to share with your students about viewing and editing the testimony, but have also provided opportunities for you to create your own activity.
What should you do now? I recommend that teachers just jump into IWitness create an account and begin exploring, complete the activities that they think might work with their unit / lesson these activities are rich in content and will provide a teachers and students confidence in using IWitness and giving the confidence to take the plunge and create their own activity either to share with a whole class or to have their students complete.
So take the plunge and begin to explore this amazing tool that provides a visual aspect to Facing History. I know that many Facing History teachers were part of the Master Teacher Institute, have taken the workshop on ethical editing and already begun to use iWitness so please share your experience as well! IWitness has a Facing History Group where teachers can share their lessons and ideas connecting Facing History and IWitness that you can join, contact Deb Chad at Deb_Chad@facing.org for further information.
