Making History Come Alive

Making History Come Alive by Howard Levin

The focus of this article was about how to make the Holocaust real for High School student and at the same time teach the application of technology. Students from the Urban School of San Francisco use digital movie cameras to capture interviews with Holocaust survivors and then transcribe the interviews linking the text with visual image. The link words and images were then use to create a website that all students could access for study. I think the project was a very exciting and hands on way for students to become involved in history. The student not only learned about the past but they created future learn opportunities for others. The size of the project meant a lot of extra hours of work. The class was a two hour block class that allow for extra work on this project. I think that this type of project is not going to work in a lot of classrooms that lack the resources and time to create movies and websites. I like the idea of going outside of the textbook to make history come alive and the work that this project did should be a inspiration for educators.

Q1 How would I use a project like this in a classroom?

A1 The use of high tech equipment can be very expensive and time consuming for a project like the one in the article. I would make the scope of the project smaller but keep all the guide posts. The interviews could be of students own family but they would have to follow the guide lines and documentation of official historical interviews. The skills of interviewing, editing and historical writing could be learn for less time and cost.

Q2 What are the negatives to the capturing oral histories?

A2 The personal story of people that lived through a historical event can be a great tool for connecting students to history. The personal stories can sometimes misleading and the teacher must guide the student through these stories to make sure they are related to the historical context.