testimony education · 14 wa damned good cryx by kay andrews 15 wash, rinse, don’trepeat by...

PastForward

Testimonyin EducationApproaching the Tipping PointA conversation with U.S. Secretary of EducationArne Duncan

TH E D I G E S T O F U S C S HOAH F OUNDAT I ON – TH E I N S T I T U T E F O R V I S U A L H I S T O R Y A ND E DU C AT I ON

Summer 2013

Voices from the ArchiveA glimpse into the life of Holocaust survivorgyörgy kun

From Viral Video toEthical EditingWhat students need to know about working with testimony holly willis

Lessons from Kony 2012If participatory politics is the future, media literacy is a must henry jenkins

Board of CouncilorsSteven SpielbergHonorary Chair

Edgar M. BronfmanHonorary Co-chair

Renée Crown Honorary Co-chair

Lew WassermanHonorary Co-chair in Memoriam

Robert J. KatzChair

Susan CrownVice Chair

Harry L. RobinsonVice Chair

Wallis AnnenbergRussel S. BernardGerald Breslauer*Joel CitronJerome Coben*Stephen CozenDavid EismanPhyllis EpsteinEmanuel Gerard*Anita FriedmanEric GreenbergMarcy B. GringlasMarc GrossmanYossie HollanderWilliam LauderLee LibermanBruce RamerMichael Rutman*Mickey ShapiroTad TaubeErna Viterbi

*Emeritus member

Next Generation CouncilSusan CrownNational Chair

Dan AdlerVice Chair

Marcy B. GringlasVice Chair

Andy IntraterVice Chair

Edward SassowerVice Chair

Wendy SassowerVice Chair

Carole BlumCecilia ChanUlrika CitronMarsha DworkinLori FifeMark Gordon Harry KrakowskiJoshua NashLindy SniderMichael Wunderman

Founding Executive DirectorsJune BeallorJames Moll

Founding Advisory CommitteeKaren KushellBranko LustigGerald R. Molen

Executive StaffStephen D. SmithExecutive Director

Kim SimonManaging Director

Sam GustmanChief Technology Officer

Karen JungblutDirector of Research and Documentation

Anita PaceDirector of Technology

Anne Marie SteinDirector of Communications

Kori StreetDirector of Education

Ari ZevDirector ofAdministration

USCShoahFoundatione Institute for Visual History and Education

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PastForwardSummer 2013

Features

MULTIMEDIA LITERACY

18 From Viral Video to Ethical Editing What students need to know about working with testimony. By Holly Willis

SPECIAL FEATURE

20 Approaching the Tipping Point: Technology in EducationA conversation with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne DuncanInterviewed by Stephen D. Smith

TESTIMONY AND MEDIA LITERACY

24 Lessons from Kony 2012If participatory politics is the future, media literacy is a must.By Henry Jenkins

“Technology has already transformed howthe world does business; it’s transformed how everyoneinteracts socially; it has literally led to democratic revolutions. Technology has yet to change education, but I think we are approaching the tipping point.”–Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, page 20

Essays

8 Encouraging Opting In Rather Than OutBy David C. Dwyer

9 IWitness at Hybrid High By Stephanie McClay

10 Unexpected TeachersBy Mariana Aguilar

11 Going Beyond GoldBy Peter D. Cook

12 Need for SpeedBy Evan Marwell Introduction by Kim Simon

14 “A Damned Good Cry”By Kay Andrews

15 Wash, Rinse, Don’t RepeatBy Michelle Sadrena Clark

16 Standing at the IntersectionBy Kori Street

26 PowerMyLearning By Elisabeth Stock

28 The View from Inside the ClassroomBy Brandon Haas

30 IWitness Evaluation ReportBy Chesley BeaverIntroduction by Kim Simon

32 A Slowly Evolving LandscapeConversation with Werner Dreier, Alice Herscovitch, and Karen PolakModerated by Kori Street

35 Digital ArgumentsBy DJ Johnson

Voices from the Archive

6 György KunTranslated and edited by Andrea Szőnyi

Departments

2 Contributors

5 Executive Director’s Letter

36 News & Events

38 Roger A. Iger: An Ambassadorfor Humanity

40 IWitness Video Challenge

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Meet the authors of this issue of PastForward

Mariana Aguilar is a thirdgrade teacher at View Park Elementary Accelerated CharterSchool, in Los Angeles, Calif.,and a Teach for America Los Angeles Corps Member. She is a graduate student at LoyolaMarymount University, pursu-ing a master’s in urban educa-tion. Aguilar graduated fromUSC with a major in social science with an emphasis in psychology. She won the 2011Viewer’s Choice Award for the USC Shoah Foundation’sStudent Voices Film contest.

Kay Andrews is a lecturer at the Institute of Education’s Centre for Holocaust Education,University of London. Shebegan her career as a secondaryschool teacher before joining theHolocaust Educational Trust in1999, where she later becamehead of education. Her currentwork at the IOE focuses onteacher education programs and creating innovative ways

of accessing Holocaust-relatedmaterials. Andrews has been amember of the U.K. delegationto the International HolocaustRemembrance Alliance (for-merly ITF) since 2005 and iscurrently chair of the Communi-cations Working Group. She hasspoken at conferences aroundthe world on issues relating to Holocaust education.

Michelle Sadrena Clark isa teacher at High Tech HighNorth County in San Marcos,Calif. She earned her master’s in Pacific International Affairs at the Graduate School of Inter-national Relations and PacificStudies, University of California,San Diego. Clark received herundergraduate degree at theUniversity of California, Irvine.Currently she is pursuing a degree in dance at Palomar College. With a dual passion

page 6 Andrea Szőnyi, senior international training consultant

PastForward brings together many voices around issues related to the educational andscholarly use of genocide eyewitness testimony.Whether survivors or their descendants, teachersor students, scholars, historians, or filmmakers,the variety of their experiences and opinions is a sample of the lively milieu of critical thought and discourse emerging around the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive.

Summer 2013

Contributors

for education and dance, Clarkembraces an energetic teachingstyle that truly motivates stu-dents to learn. She is a graduateof the USC Shoah Foundation’s2011 Master Teacher Workshop.

Peter D. Cook spent five yearsas a U.S. Marine, after finishinghigh school—serving at U.S.Embassies in Ecuador, Spain,and Haiti. He studied at Ameri-can University, in Washington,D.C., after which he became ateacher—and worked in theCzech Republic and in Japan—as well as stints on the East andWest coasts in America. Cookhas a master’s in organizationalmanagement, and is working onhis PhD in urban leadership atClaremont Graduate University.Cook is a USC Shoah Founda-tion 2011 Master Teacher Work-shop graduate. He currentlyteaches at Camino Nuevo Char-ter Academy, Los Angeles, Calif.

Werner Dreier is the foundingdirector of _erinnern.at_, an institution for teacher trainingand development of learning ma-terial on behalf of the AustrianMinistry of Education. Dreier is a past chair and current memberof the International HolocaustRemembrance Alliance’s Educa-tion Working Group.

David C. Dwyer is the firstholder of the Katzman-ErnstChair for Educational Entrepre-neurship, Technology, and Inno-vation at USC’s Rossier Schoolof Education. Through that rolehe founded USC Hybrid HighSchool, a transformationalurban charter school. Dwyer was a Distinguished Scientist at Apple Inc., where he led theApple Classroom of Tomorrow(ACOT) research program. Healso served at Apple as directorof Education Technologies, waschief academic officer at ApexLearning, founded two startupeducation companies in SiliconValley, and, in his formativeyears, was a recognized middle-and high school science teacher.

Brandon Haas is a high schoolteacher in Tampa, Fla. At Free-dom High School, Haas teachesHolocaust studies and assiststhe school district of Hillsbor-ough County’s Secondary SocialStudies in matters pertaining toHolocaust curriculum andteacher training. He is also pur-suing a doctoral degree in cur-riculum and instruction fromthe University of South Florida,through which he investigatesHolocaust education and peda-gogy. Haas is a graduate of theUSC Shoah Foundation’s 2011Master Teacher Workshop.

Alice Herscovitch is the executive director of the Mon-treal Holocaust Memorial Centre. She has been a memberof the International HolocaustRemembrance Alliance’s Educa-tion Working Group since 2005and became its chair in 2013.

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’sProfessor of Communication,Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at the Universityof Southern California. He ar-rived at USC in fall 2009 afterspending the past decade as the

director of the MIT ComparativeMedia Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the authorand/or editor of 15 books on vari-ous aspects of media and popu-lar culture, including SpreadableMedia: Creating Value and Mean-ing in a Networked Culture (2013,with Sam Ford and JoshuaGreen) and Reading in a Partici-patory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick for the Literature Classroom(2013, with Wyn Kelley, KatieClinton, Jenna McWilliams, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, and ErinReilly). He has written for Tech-nology Review, Computer Games,Salon, and The Huffington Post.

DJ Johnson is a documentaryfilmmaker, media artist, and educator. He serves as assistantprofessor of cinema practice inthe Institute for Multimedia Lit-eracy (IML) at the USC Schoolof Cinematic Arts. In his workas the former video documentar-ian for the IML, Johnson devel-oped innovative techniques todocument multimedia pedagogyand scholarship. With expertisein digital storytelling, documen-tary production, and new media,Johnson has developed andtaught courses for educationalprograms internationally.

Evan Marwell is the CEO andco-founder of EducationSuper-Highway. Over the last 25 years,he has been an entrepreneur,starting companies in thetelecommunications, software,hedge fund and consumer retail-ing industries. He has served on the board of several for-profitand nonprofit organizations.Marwell was most recently thechairman of the Golden GateChapter of the Young Presi-dents’ Organization and is cur-rently the president of the Boardof Trustees at the Katherine Delmar Burke School in SanFrancisco. He has now turnedhis entrepreneurial energies toward improving education.


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Contributors

Stephanie McClay is thefounding principal of USC Hybrid High School. She hasmore than 20 years of experi-ence in public education as ateacher, instructional technologyspecialist, and principal. Dr. McClay completed her EdD inEducational Leadership at Cali-fornia State University, North-ridge. Her dissertation researchfocused on identifying the char-acteristics of effective alternativeschools that serve high-needsstudent populations.

Karen Polak works for the International Department of theAnne Frank House as a seniorstaff member. She was Interna-tional Holocaust RemembranceAlliance’s Education WorkingGroup chair in 2004-2005 andhas been the chair of the Work-ing Group on the Genocide ofthe Roma since 2006.

Kim Simon is the managing director of the USC ShoahFoundation. With responsibilityfor oversight of the Institute’sday-to-day operations, she directsthe development and implemen-tation of all core mission activi-ties including the educationprogram, research agenda, documentation activity, publicoutreach, and administration.Simon coordinated the Institute’seffort to collect interviews with

Holocaust survivors and wit-nesses around the world. Shesubsequently established the office of global partnerships, creating and developing its international program agenda,and overseeing its work in 17 countries.

Elisabeth Stock is CEO andco-founder of CFY, a nationalnonprofit that helps students,teachers, and parents use digitallearning to improve educationaloutcomes. A recognized leaderin her field, she is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow and alifelong Ashoka fellow. Stock has given briefings at the WhiteHouse, the U.S. Department of Education, and the FCC, and has served as an adviser to the Corporation for PublicBroadcasting and the NYC

Department of Education. Priorto CFY, she served as a WhiteHouse Fellow in the Office ofthe Vice President. She holdsfour degrees from MIT.

Kori Street is the USC ShoahFoundation’s director of educa-tion. She came to the Institute in 2011 from Mount Royal Uni-versity, where she was an associ-ate professor and served as chairof entrepreneurship, nonprofitstudies, international businessand aviation in the BissettSchool of Business. After com-pleting a master’s in the Historyof Education and Gender/Femi-nism at the Ontario Institute forStudies in Education/Universityof Toronto, Dr. Street receivedher PhD in history from theUniversity of Victoria in 2001.Dr. Street’s current work is fo-cused on the preservation andeducational use of Holocaustsurvivor testimonies.

Andrea Szőnyi is senior inter-national training consultant andregional representative in Hun-gary for the USC Shoah Founda-tion. She is also the director ofZachor Foundation for SocialRemembrance, a nonprofit educational institution workingin Holocaust and human rightseducation in Hungary. Szőnyigraduated from Eötvös LorándUniversity, Budapest, with degrees in English and Russianlanguages and literature. Shealso received a degree in culturalmanagement. Szőnyi worked foryears as a high school teacher.She is the author of several edu-

cational materials and the editorof publications and has alsopublished several translations.She is a Holocaust EducationFellow of the Imperial War Museum in London.

Holly Willis is a faculty mem-ber in the School of CinematicArts at the University of South-ern California, where she alsoserves as director of AcademicPrograms for the Institute forMultimedia Literacy and Direc-tor of the Media Arts + PracticePhD program. As part of herwork Willis teaches, organizesworkshops, and oversees aca-demic programs designed to introduce new media literacy

skills across USC’s campus andcurriculum. She is the editor ofThe New Ecology of Things (ArtCenter College of Design, 2007)and the author of New DigitalCinema: Reinventing the MovingImage (Wallflower Press, 2005).

Editorial TeamStephen D. SmithKim SimonAnne Marie SteinKori StreetJemal YoungKrystal Szabo

DesignRick Simner Design

PrintingColorGraphics, Inc.

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Testimony & the 21stCentury Student

PastForward Executive Director’s Letter

Technology and Education. Digital technology is estimated by some expertsto be 400 times faster today than it was when USC Shoah Foundation – The Institutefor Visual History and Education began collecting testimony from Holocaust witnesses.That same period of 20 years has brought dramatic changes to the education landscapeas well, and it has fundamentally changed the way testimony is used for learning. Earlyon, it was primarily through educational DVDs that included short segments of testi-mony that were used to supplement a Holocaust curriculum. But now, instead of onlysupporting traditional textbooks or being used to round out other multimedia content,testimony is at the very heart of the learning process. This issue of PastForward demon-strates just how far testimony-based education has come since the beginning.

With the advent of the digital classroom comes the need to develop content ideal forstudents who learn in ways that are very different from how every previous generationlearned. Young people sift vast amounts of data every day, and many of them are morecomfortable than their parents and teachers when it comes to using technology. But in-formal participation in the digital milieu isn’t enough to give students the skills theyneed to thrive. That’s why at the Institute, we are committed to designing resourcesthat use testimony for digital literacy, as well as character development.

Our flagship resource for students and teachers is IWitness (iwitness.usc.edu), a web-site that lets students use genocide witness testimony for individual- and group projects.They learn to search testimony, extract short clips, and produce video essays to presentto teachers and peers. IWitness has a growing library of activities that teachers can usein class or assign for homework; they can also design their own lessons and activitiesand share them with other educators around the world. But the ultimate purpose ofIWitness, as with all testimony-based education, is to motivate young people to have apositive impact on others; that’s why Steven Spielberg has invited students to participatein the IWitness Video Challenge. Inspired by the message of Schindler’s List—that oneperson can make a difference—the contest challenges students to create a short videoessay that interweaves their own footage with survivor testimony to chronicle somethingpositive they do in their community. Look for more on the IWitness Video Challengethroughout the coming year.

I hope you enjoy the opportunity in these pages to learn from some of the minds be-hind our educational platforms and teachers who use testimony from day to day. Theirinsights remind us of the extraordinary power of testimony to instruct and inspire everygeneration.

By Stephen D. SmithInformal participation in the digital milieu isn’t enough

to give students the skills they need to thrive.


Gyuri was a fast runner, and he always gotaway from the bullies who waited for him afterschool. But there was nowhere to run when hisfamily was evicted from their farm in 1944;they were sent to a nearby ghetto, then to abrick factory in Székesfehérvár. “My parentscouldn’t imagine where we would end up, somy mother kept repeating that we should al-ways stay together,” Gyuri recalled. “No matterwhat, the family must not be torn apart.”Gyuri was a fast runner, and he always got

away from the bullies who waited for him afterschool. But there was nowhere to run when hisfamily was evicted from their farm in 1944 andsent to a nearby ghetto, then to a brick factoryin Székesfehérvár. “My parents couldn’t imag-ine where we would end up, so my motherkept repeating that we should always stay to-gether,” Gyuri recalled. “No matter what, thefamily must not be torn apart.”Brick factories like the one in Székesfehérvár

were the last stop for many Hungarian Jews be-fore deportation, and in May, Gyuri and hisfamily were loaded onto a train. “Being a child,I was unable to comprehend what was goingon,” he said.But nobody could have imagined where that

train was headed.The first thing Gyuri remembered seeing at

Auschwitz was a Nazi soldier. They had dogs,and their prisoners were people of all ages instriped uniforms. The new arrivals were linedup for inspection. “Mom was holding ourhands,” Gyuri remembered. “Dad was walkingnext to us. Then he was separated from us.”Márton Kuhn would eventually end up at

Dachau. Gyuri, Pista, and their mother, Piroskawere brought face to face with Josef Mengele,the SS officer and physician notorious for con-ducting human experiments at Auschwitz anddeciding who would live and who would die.Mengele looked at the boys. “He asked mymother one word,” Gyuri recalled: “ ‘Zwillinge[Twins]?’ My mother did not speak German.However, she instinctively replied, ‘Ja.’ ”Gyuri and Pista were not only close in age;

they closely resembled one another and, as wascustomary at that time, they were even dressedalike. Their mother’s one-word answer to Men-gele’s fateful question “meant life for us,”Gyuri said, for the boys were immediately sep-arated for experimentation. Their mother, how-ever, was sent in a different direction.“My last memory of my mother is that she

is holding my hand and we are separated. Wewere simply torn apart: we, one way and she,the other. I had that picture with me a long

Nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors and other witnesses gave their testimonies to the Institute, from 57 countries and in 33 languages. The Visual History Archive is filled with more than 100,000 hours of unique life stories. It would take more than 12 years to watch every person's testimony, and it would be impossible to share all their stories in PastForward. Here is a glimpse from the Visual History Archive into the life of survivor György Kun.

Voices from the Archive

WORKING IN HOLOCAUST EDUCATION is no dream job, especially in Hungary.“How did you end up doing this job?”“What’s your motivation?”I’m used to hearing these kinds of questions. The truth is, there were even

times in the past when I asked them of myself. But after what happened lastyear, questions like these don’t trouble me as much as they used to. It’s not somuch that I found the answer; it’s more like the answer found me.This isn’t a story I can tell by myself, because it was someone else’s story beforeit became mine. It began in January 1932, in village on the Hungarian coun-tryside called Vállaj, when a farm manager named Márton Kuhn and his wife,Piroska, had their first child. They named him György (Gyuri). Eleven monthslater, his brother, István (Pista), was born.Gyuri and Pista were very close; they spent most of their time together while

their father managed the farm and their mother ran the house. Many years later,when Gyuri gave his testimony to the USC Shoah Foundation, he reminiscedabout his early childhood: running in from the garden when his mother’s home-made donuts were ready; going to elementary school in the village, then Jewishschool in neighboring Székesfehérvár; playing outside with Pista. It was “the good life,” Gyuri said.More than 560,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during World War II,

most of them at Auschwitz. What ended in genocide began with antisemiticlegislation that violated even the most basic rights, including the right to aneducation. When Gyuri was denied entry into the secondary grammar school,his parents managed to enroll him in a local high school instead. But in Hun-gary, lawmakers weren’t the only ones whose hatred of Jews had become overt;other schoolchildren tried to attack him on his way home.

György KunBorn January 23, 1932, Vállaj, Hungary

Interviewed 1999, Budapest, Hungary

Translated and edited by Andrea Szőnyi


time, and I know my brother did, too.”Piroska Kuhn perished at Auschwitz. Gyuri

and Pista were taken to the twin camp, butMengele’s mistake was almost immediatelydiscovered. When they were being registered,each boy gave his true date of birth; the adultinmates in charge of registration stared atthem in “total bewilderment.” One of themwas a 28-year-old man named Ernő Spiegel.If any inmate in the twin camp was the

leader, it was Ernő Spiegel. Sometimes referredto as the “twin capo”, sometimes as the “twin’sfather,” he was trusted by Mengele and re-spected by the other inmates. Gyuri and Pista’sfirst encounter with Spiegel would not be theirlast; instead of reporting them, he falsifiedPista’s registration so that his birthdaymatched Gyuri’s. “Then the numbers were tat-tooed on our arms,” Gyuri said. “I became A-14321 and my brother, A-14322.”The boys survived Auschwitz and were re-

united with their father. In 1956, during therevolution, Pista left Hungary for the UnitedStates and settled in Oklahoma City, where hestudied to be an architect. In 1962 at the age of30, while working at a hospital to finance hisuniversity studies, Pista became ill and died.Gyuri remained in Hungary after the war.

After marrying in 1960, he and his wife,Ágnes, had a baby girl. They settled in Bu-dapest, where Gyuri and Ágnes still live to thisday. He has posttraumatic stress disorder, andhe believes that what he experienced as achild—what history calls the Holocaust—hadan effect on more than his health.“Very often, I underrate myself,” he says.

“There is a certain repression, almost fear, inme that I believe comes from there.”Throughout his life, Gyuri has reminisced

about Ernő Spiegel: how he risked his life morethan once to save others; how he led the twinshomeward when Auschwitz was liberated; howhe appointed older boys to get the youngerboys home when it was time to part ways; howhe helped the boys hope “that maybe, one day,life would be joyful again.”Gyuri’s testimony is one of thousands that

people can watch at Central European Univer-sity (CEU), in Budapest, where the Visual His-tory Archive has been available to the publicsince 2009. Last spring, a colleague at CEUforwarded an email sent on behalf of a doctoralstudent at Royal Holloway, University of Lon-don. It was an email about a research question.The question was simple enough, and my col-league had already answered it, so why forwardthe message? I read further.

The doctoral student was conducting researchon a Hungarian Jew from Munkachevo, who su-pervised male twins at Auschwitz. I read thename of the Jew, Ernő Spiegel and sent a replyto the translator, who had written on behalf ofthe doctoral student, and in her subsequentemail, she asked if I had information about anyinmates in the camp besides Ernő Spiegel—specifically, Gyuri Kun and his brother. I told thetranslator that Gyuri Kun is my father. When thedoctoral student, Yoav Heller, learned this, thenext email came directly from him. He said he’dhad my father’s story translated into English; heknew the tiniest details of what had happenedto him and his brother at Auschwitz. Heller con-tinued, saying that he organizes an annual sum-mer trip to Poland for 120 young Israelis, whoall learn about Ernő Spiegel and those he helpedsaved, including my father.Nine days after our email exchange, Heller

came to my father’s house in Budapest. Thetwo of them sat down together, and I translated.“I want to tell you that I have been searching

for you for two years,” Heller told my father. “Iam now utterly honored and moved to be sit-ting here and meeting you in person.”I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone speak to

another person with such genuine respect.Their subsequent conversation confirmed that

ErnőSpiegel had indeed rescued two boys in May1944. In fact, he recalled the incident in his owntestimony, which I later found in the book Chil-dren of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold

Story of the Twins of Auschwitz, by Lucette MatalonLagnado and Sheila Cohn Dekel. “One day, I wasfilling out forms for a new pair of twins and no-ticed the date of birth one child had given me wasdifferent from the birth date of his sibling,”Spiegel recalled. “It was obvious they were not re-ally twins. But I knew that if anyone learned this,the boys would immediately be put to death. Andso I decided to take a chance, and put down falseinformation. I ‘made’ them twins. I knew if Men-gele learned of what I had done, he would killboth me and the children on the spot.”This was the same incident my father had

described in his testimony; in that moment,Spiegel had saved my father’s life.I could be teaching English, or running a

school, or doing any number of things to makea difference instead of working in Holocausteducation. But now I understand that nothinghappens by accident; our lives are interwovenwithin a mosaic-like, larger context. My father’sstory is part of Ernő Spiegel’s story; their sto-ries are part of their children’s: Judith and Is-rael Spiegel’s, and part of mine. There’s moreto be found in this larger story than mere po-etry; for me, there is also purpose.I owe something to Ernő Spiegel. I owe him

my father’s life, my own life, and the lives ofmy children. I owe him our future, and I amfortunate enough to be in a position to paysome of this debt by being an educator whouses the “voices in the archive”—voices like myfather’s—to do so.

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Gyuri (left) and Pista were mistaken for twins by Josef Mengele.


Rethinking Our schools

feature academic and social-emotional goals,digital and hands-on curriculums, and on-siteand online assistance for students. It is organ-ized to ensure that a diverse range of studentsis actively and productively engaged. Our ap-proach might strike some as counterintuitive,but we are leveraging technology to enhancenot only our students’ academic knowledge butalso the human side of the equation—their lifeskills and the real-world applicability of theirhigh school education. The goal is to make surethat every individual who walks through thedoors in grade nine walks out of the school, suc-cessful, with a high school diploma. The key toensuring that success is a unique model thatwill provide them a better opportunity to grad-uate successfully than they would have had ina traditional high school.

Key Elements of the USC Hybrid High ModelConnectedness. A foundational aspect of ourmodel is a pervasive belief that social-emo-tional learning must go hand in hand with ac-ademic growth. To be successful, studentsmust feel safe, respected, and connected to theschool and its environment. Technology is partof what connects them, but we’ve also devel-oped a human connection—permanent advi-sory groups. Students are assigned to a groupof about 25 with a permanent faculty adviser.These advisory groups continue to meet everyday, and they will remain together for all fouryears of each student’s high school life. Advi-sory groups focus on interpersonal and lifeskills, college knowledge, and means for resolv-ing conflicts and other problems.

Personalization. Students are slotted intocourses where they can experience both successand challenge. Each student, then, has a person-alized learning plan that evolves weekly as coursedata and teacher observations accrue and vali-date or challenge the benchmark results. Wehave chosen to begin with the Apex Learningcurriculum and will add to it as needs arise.

A key advantage of this digital curriculum isthat performance and persistence data are con-stantly generated in the background, as stu-dents work through lessons and units.

Real-World Application. In addition to the im-plementation of the digital courses, the criticallyimportant hands-on and inquiry-based side ofour instructional plan will engage our studentsin challenging, interdisciplinary projects withthe goals of deepening understanding andlearning to apply skills like research and analy-sis, critical dialogue, argument, persuasion, andcollaboration. These projects will also providethe opportunity for the development of techni-

Encouraging Opting InRather Than OutBy David C. DwyerAn education innovation designed to stem the tide

of students failing to finish

ONE MILLION three-hundred-thousand U.S. stu-dents choose to drop out of high school annually.i

In our own USC backyard, 46 percent of highschool-aged students drop out. These kinds ofstatistics account for the fact that in high school

graduation rates, the United States places twentieth in a list of 28 developednations around the world—that’s eighth from the bottom.ii

The statistics have a human story as well. The decision to drop out has dev-astating consequences on students’ lives after they leave school. They earn farless than their graduating counterparts and are far more likely to live in povertyand depend upon welfare. High school dropouts live nine fewer years thanhigh school graduates. Their rate of incarceration and recidivism is six timesgreater than high-school graduates and 65 times greater than high school grad-uates who go on to complete four-year college programs.iii The cost of thedropout problem to American society is startling, too—an estimated $3 trillionover the next decade.iv

Research points to a litany of causes, including student behaviors such aspoor attendance, failed core courses, disruptive activity, drug use, and incar-ceration. The likelihood of dropping out is exacerbated by family attributessuch as poverty, single parenthood, English as a second language, and the ab-sence of an academically successful role model in the familyv.vi In Rumbergerand Lim’s comprehensive review, however, another statistic stands out: 32 per-cent of U.S. dropouts leave school to care for ailing relatives or for youngersiblings, and/or they must work to help support their families. Research findsthat the institution of schooling contributes as much to dropout rates as do per-sonal characteristics.vii

It was in this context two years ago when we began planning Hybrid High,and we asked ourselves: Could we attack the dropout problem by deconstruct-ing the traditional school and offering a significant alternative? What would ittake to create in USC’s neighborhood a high school that graduates 100 percentof its high-need students who would be socially and academically prepared forsuccess in college and career?

USC Hybrid High School (HHS) opened its doors on September 4, 2012, asan independent charter high school, authorized by the Los Angeles UnifiedSchool District. We called it “Hybrid” because it was a mix of parts: It would

David C. Dwyer is founder of USC Hybrid High

School, a transformational urban charter school.

For a full biography, see page 3.

cal and digital skills in all project phases. As stu-dents mature and increasingly demonstrateself-discipline and reliability, community-basedproject opportunities and internships will beadded to the instructional mix.

Access. Access is the fourth important ele-ment in our design, and it is in the mix for twogood reasons: 1) remember the fact that one-third of dropouts leave school because ofschedule conflicts; and 2) our students willneed as much time as they are willing to workwith us to build from their academic past—whatever it is—toward high school graduationand success in college and the workplace.

Technology. Fifth and final in our list of whatmakes USC Hybrid High School different isthe fact that students find themselves immedi-ately engaged with mobile, laptop, and desktoptechnologies. Simply, USC Hybrid High Schoolas a vision and as a reality could not exist with-

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“We are leveraging technology to en-hance not only our students’ academicknowledge but also the human side ofthe equation,” writes USC Hybrid Highfounder David C. Dwyer, pictured herewith a student using IWitness.

IWitness at Hybrid HighBy Stephanie McClay, Principal, USC Hybrid High School

If you dropped in to visit us at Hybrid High, you would find students connected to one an-other and to and through technology. Each student enjoys his or her own MacBook Air lap-top and iPod touch. They use these tools to complete assignments, check their progress,access virtual resources. In short, they are finding innovative and engaging ways to addressthe digital divide that exists in American schools. You will also see students using IWitness.

IWitness is a platform that complements the innovative approach which defines the key el-ements of the model at Hybrid High: It supports social-emotional learning, as well as the cog-nitive learning, connecting students to the past in a way that is relevant to their lives; it workswell with the digital, personalized learning plans, and project-based work; it has real-world ap-plicability through the challenging, interdisciplinary activities; and it is technological. IWitnessaligns well with our commitment to project-based learning and engaging students in authen-tic learning experiences.

Before we accepted the first students, Hybrid High staff worked with USC Shoah Founda-tion educators to develop a video-editing activity that would form a key part of their grade ten curriculum. In addition, students in grade nine will take on the IWitness Video Challenge(iwitness.usc.edu) this spring. We want students to be empowered to tell their own storiesand advocate for change in their own lives and in their communities. IWitness is an excellentvehicle for moving our students along that path.

Partnerships between schools such as Hybrid High and the USC Shoah Foundation cancontribute to students overcoming technological barriers and developing the skills, knowl-edge, and capacity to succeed in the 21st century.


out the integral use of information technologiesto: 1) engage its technology-oriented studentswith highly interactive curriculum; 2) captureand share student achievement and perform-ance data in real time; 3) provide 21st-centurytools for inquiry projects; 4) provide access tovirtual-expert resources; and 5) increase theschool’s overall efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Lessons to DateAs I write this, we are not yet three months intothe first year of implementing what we see as along-term and, hopefully, replicable vision.These weeks have been filled with excitementand great promise but also, to no one’s sur-prise, some reality checks. For example, for ado-lescents we should have made developing aphysical education program a higher priority.We are also adjusting to the challenges and op-portunities of an open learning space. We hadset our students on a path that began in a tradi-tional, familiar, and highly structured modeand, then, week by week increased their degreesof freedom so that they could work toward

Teachers respond

Unexpected TeachersBy Mariana AguilarSometimes the most important learning

happens outside of the classroom

STUDENTS START COLLEGE with many expecta-tions, but learning from Holocaust survivorswas never one of mine. It happened during myjunior year at USC, in a class offered by the In-stitute of Multimedia Literacy, when the profes-

sor assigned a project unlike anything I had ever done before. Each studenthad to produce a short film based on testimony from the USC Shoah Foun-

dation’s Visual History Archive and enter it in something called the StudentVoices Short Film Competition.

Not only had I never watched survivor testimony before, but Iwasn’t a filmmaker or even a film student! I was majoring in psy-

chology. But I did have some background in multimedia, and itwas enough to make me aware of visual medium’s power to movepeople.

The idea behind the contest was to encourage dialogue aboutgenocide and human rights, and I decided that my film wouldexplore persecution in contemporary times. Then my professor

encouraged me to be more specific.My first encounter with racism happened in college, when some-

one who I thought was a friend spoke derogatorily about my Mexicanancestry. It was hurtful and humiliating, and with no way to share

what I was feeling with others, I was left with a sense of isolationthat made it even more difficult to heal.

That semester, I watched more than 40 hours oftestimony. As I saw the survivors share emotionssimilar to what I felt—amplified times a million—I realized that I wasn’t the only one who, at somepoint, had been made to feel shame simply forbeing born into certain group. Hearing sur-vivors’ voices, seeing their faces, and connectingwith them on an emotional level was empow-ering. I felt like I could say something, too; Icould use my film as a way to say, “Listen up!Prejudice? Bigotry? Hatred? They still exist.”

Mariana Aguilar is a third grade teacher at View

Park Elementary Accelerated Charter School, in

Los Angeles. For a full biography, see page 2.

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defining their daily routines and learning plans.Eight weeks in, we have realized that some stu-dents would clearly need more time to adjust.

In conclusion, we are learning every day aswe wrestle with deeply rooted norms aboutschooling, as well as deal with the environmen-tal issues our students bring with them. Somechallenges will be more easily addressed thanothers. We see great promise in the many wayswe are employing technology to motivate, rein-force, and support both students and teachers.But the work of schools is hard, requiring in-ordinate dedication, energy, and creativity fromthe staff—and, of course, the students.

Excerpted from “Toward a 21st-CenturyHigh School:An Iterative Quest,” Spring 2013 in EducationalTechnology: The Magazine for Managers ofChange in Education. March-April issue 2013,Volume 53, Number 2.

i AEE. (2010). High school dropouts in America. Washington, D.C.:Alliance for Excellent Education.

ii Valencia, R., Menchaca, M., & Donato, R. (2002). Segregation, deseg-retaion, and integration of Chicano students: Old and new realities. InR. Valencia (Ed.), Chicano school failure and success: Past presentand future (2nd ed.) (pp. 83-99, 104-109). New York: Routledge Falmer.

iii Sum, Andrew, Khatiwada, Ishwar, McLaughlin, Joseph, & Sheila,Palma. (2009). The consequences of dropping out of high school: Jobless-ness and jailing for high school dropouts and the high cost for taxpayers.Boston, MA: Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

iv AEE. (2007). The high cost of high school dropouts: What the nationpays for inadequate high schools. Washington, D.C.: Alliance for Ex-cellent Education; CLMS. (2009). Left behind: The nation'sdropout crisis. Center for Labor Market Studies at NortheasternUniversity and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago.

vi Jerald, CraigD. (2006). Identifying potential dropouts: Key lessonsfor building an early warning data system. Staying the Course:High Standards and Imporved Graduation Rates. New York:A joint project of Achieve, Inc. and the Carnegie Corporation.

vii Rumberger, Russell W, & Lim, Sun Ah. (2008). Why stu-dents drop out of school: A review of 25 years of research.Santa Barbara, CA: California Dropout Research Projectat the University of California, Santa Barbara.

viii Finn, J. D. (1993). School engagement and stu-dents at-risk. Washington, D.C.: National Center forEducation Statistics.

During her undergraduate studies at USC, MarianaAguilar learned about the Institute’s Holocaust sur-vivor testimonies by participating in the Student VoicesFilm contest and went on to complete an internship at the Institute.



Going Beyond GoldBy Peter D. CookThere’s more at stake in education

than standardized test scores

I TEACH ECONOMICS and government at a publichigh school in Los Angeles, and I love it. But asteachers, we’re up against a school-reform agendathat’s focused on standardized testing, which leadsto standardized thinking; regardless of how well

they test, it doesn’t prepare students for the difficult moral decisions they’ll face.One of the things I learned as a Marine Corps sergeant is that if you want

to get any traction in teaching, you’ve got to get the learning environment right.You’ve got to put culture before content, and you have to recognize that to beeducated is to be able to tell a story.

Imagine you’re a student studying cost-benefit analysis in my economicsclass. Instead of taking notes while I lecture, you’re watching a Holocaust sur-vivor explain what it was like at Auschwitz to stand in line for food, decidingwhether to wait for a chance at the front, where Dr. Mengele makes his selec-tions, or go hungry another day to avoid his attention. Presented this way, theconcept of cost-benefit analysis moves into a deeply philosophical space,where students begin to wrestle with issues of economics and morality. Thesame approach works in my government class, where the testimonies make

it possible for veterans who liberated camps tohelp students understand why they swore anoath to defend and uphold not only the U.S.Constitution but also the freedoms it assertsfor all humanity. Their stories give the Consti-tution the significance it deserves as a livingdocument that has as much bearing on ourlives today as it did when it was ratified.

I believe that schools and teachers can go be-yond gold if, rather than accept accolades for stu-dent-achievement on multiple-choice tests, wefocus instead on character education. Culturehas to come before content, but it can also bebuilt through content, by following the lead ofthe finest educators out there: survivors and eye-witnesses whose knowledge and insights areours to learn from.

I entered my film in the contest. It was called“Beanstar,” and it won the Viewers’ ChoiceAward, which was totally unexpected. But itwas nothing compared to the surprising effectof watching Holocaust survivor testimony; thetruth is, it changed my life. It restored my con-fidence as a Mexican American, it helped meheal from the hurtful incident I had experi-enced, and most importantly, it renewed mysense of responsibility to teach respect and em-pathy to others.

I’m in graduate school now, but I’m also inmy first of two years teaching as a member ofTeach For America. My students are in thirdgrade, and while it might not be easy to broachdifficult subjects such as racism with youngchildren, helping them think critically aboutstereotypes is one of the most importantthings I can do. For better or for worse, we allhave the power to change someone’s life; Ilearned this from the Holocaust survivors,who changed mine.

To watch the short film, called “Beanstar,” whichMariana entered into the Student Voices Film con-test, visit: http://sfi.usc.edu/studentvoices/2011/

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“If you want to get any tractionin teaching, you've got to get the learning environment right. You'vegot to put culture before content,and you have to recognize that to be educated is to be able to tell a story.”

Peter D. Cook is a teacher at Camino Nuevo

Charter Academy, Los Angeles, Calif. For a full

biography, see page 3.

Getting traction Peter Cook uses testimony to teach high school economics and government.


The first issue is that we don’t know what theinternet infrastructure is at every school inAmerica. Consequently, educators don’t knowthat digital learning is possible and policymak-ers don’t know if schools are ready for the next-generation assessments, which are set tolaunch in 2014-2015. To address this gap, Edu-cationSuperHighway has launched the NationalSchool Speed Test in conjunction with the Fed-eral Communications Commission, the U.S.Department of Education, and more than 50national, state, and local organizations. Thegoal is to get 1 million educators and studentsto take one minute to test the speed of theirschool’s internet access. The results will helpsuperintendents and policymakers to identifywhich schools need to be upgraded.

The second issue is that networking requireshighly specialized expertise, and few schoolshave the resources for a dedicated networktechnician. The typical school tech-support per-son is overwhelmed simply trying to supportthe computers, iPads, and other devices on theschool network. To fill this gap, Education-SuperHighway is creating the Education GeekSquad, which will help schools design, imple-ment, and monitor state-of- the-art networks.

The third issue that we must address is low-ering the cost of internet access for schools.Today, despite being one of the largest cus-

Need for SpeedBy Evan MarwellIs your school fast enough for digital learning?

Removing roadblocks to high-speed Internet

DIGITAL LEARNING IS transforming education,and online video is at the center of this transfor-mation. Video from organizations like the USCShoah Foundation, Discovery Education andKhan Academy can give every student access tothe curriculum they need, regardless of whethertheir school offers a particular course. It also al-

lows our best teachers to instruct millions of students, not just the 30 to 60who attend their class.

Teachers and students are already using video in their classrooms to en-hance and personalize the learning experience. Unfortunately, their ability todo so is often constrained by a lack of sufficient internet access. A typical videostream requires 1 to 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth. When being used to personalizethe learning experience, this implies that a typical classroom requires 45Mbps,and a “digital learning school” will require more than 100Mbps. In contrast, atypical K-12 school has only 10Mbps

According to the nonprofit EducationSuperHighway, 80 percent of Ameri-can schools are not ready for digital learning—an issue even more prevalentin low-income and rural schools. To fix this, we need to upgrade the internetinfrastructure of America’s schools so that each has 100Mbps of internet ac-cess and modern Wi-Fi networks.

EducationSuperHighway has identified four “gaps” that need to be addressedin order to upgrade the internet access of America’s K-12 schools for digital learn-ing: an information gap, an expertise gap, a procurement gap, and a policy gap.

Evan Marwell is the CEO and co-founder

of EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit focused

on removing the roadblocks to high-speed

Internet for students and teachers. For a full


Survivor Testimony and Bandwidth: What Happens When Students Press Play?By Kim Simon

Among a number of challenges for those providing new media learning tools and sites,is the ability to stream and play video seam-lessly. When the video plays, no one notices.When the video does not work, it frustrateseducators, students, and educational-contentproviders; this frustration becomes all themore understandable with the increasingubiquity of instant video outside the formalschool environment. Traffic Shaping is thepractice of regulating network data transferto ensure a certain level of quality of serviceor performance. Lack of availability, poorquality, disruption, reduction, and limitationof service are difficult downsides of lack ofaccess to broadband, and pose a challengefor providers of sites and resources that are

rich with video content. For example, IWit-ness video is served at approximately 480Kbps, which is approximately the equivalentof a video one might capture on their smart-phone. This is the bare minimum to allow 20 students in one classroom to use multiplevideos simultaneously. For students usingIWitness to achieve the learning outcomessuccessfully—outcomes that include digital,media, and information literacy capacity anddisciplinary content—the audio-visual con-tent needs to be accessible and stable. Inshort, it needs to play.

In the following article, Evan Marwell, CEOand co-founder of EducationSuperHighway,addresses the scope of this problem in theUnited States and gives insight to the current

The Digital divide


tomers for Internet access in the country(spending nearly $1.5 billion collectively), thetypical school pays four times more than itshould for its internet access. This is becauseour schools buy as 14,000 independent dis-tricts, which means they are not taking advan-tage of the benefits of volume purchasing. Toaddress this, EducationSuperHighway is creat-ing a Broadband Buying Consortia that will en-able a schools to pool their purchasing andencourage greater numbers of vendors to bidfor a school’s business. In some states, this ap-proach has led to a 90 percent drop in the priceof internet access—a result EducationSuper-Highway hopes to replicate across the nation.

The final issue centers on reforming the

FCC’s E-Rate program, which was responsiblefor ensuring that every school was connectedto the internet. Now, the program needs to en-sure that every school is ready for digital learn-ing. To do that, EducationSuperHighway isworking with the FCC to find ways to maxi-mize the effects of the $2 to $3 billion per yearthat E-Rate provides to schools and libraries.

The good news is that all of what Education-SuperHighway is proposing has been done be-fore. States have created central networkinggroups to support the internet infrastructurein their K-12 schools. Districts have formed re-gional buying consortia to lower the cost of in-ternet access, and the FCC has introducedreforms that have begun to address the capac-

ity issues which hold back digital learning.Combine this with the fact that no new tech-nology is needed to solve this problem and Ed-ucationSuperHighway believes it can upgradeU.S. schools for digital learning before the endof the decade.

To find out more, visit www.educationsuperhigh-way.org. To test your school’s internet access, visitwww.schoolspeedtest.org.

barriers that need to be removed in order to be more successful with bringing digitalmedia into every classroom.

We anticipate and work toward a futurewhen teachers and students have regularand consistent access to broadband at ahigh enough level to allow such ease of use.When technical concerns such as broadbandaccess are no longer significant hurdles, students everywhere can continue to partici-pate directly in their own learning in active,collaborative, and relevant ways, and educa-tors will be able to continue to focus on theinnovation, creativity, and learning outcomesof their students.

“A typical video stream requires 1 to 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth. When beingused to personalize the learning experience, this implies that a typical class-room requires 45Mbps, and a ‘digital learning school’ will require more than100Mbps. In contrast, a typical K-12 school has only 10Mbps.”


“A Damned Good Cry”

FOR MANY OF US working in the area of Holo-caust education around the globe, one questionhas been raised repeatedly over the past years:How do we ensure that the survivor voice contin-ues to be heard when individuals are no longerable to tell their stories? Here in the United King-dom, there are a number of survivor speakers, butwith more than 3,400 secondary schools (ages 11to 18) in England alone, the actual number of stu-dents who will hear a survivor first-hand is limited.Thus, it is imperative to find innovative ways tobring survivor voices into the classroom. At the In-stitute of Education’s Centre for Holocaust Educa-

tion, we have created programs for teachers that aim to address this and otherissues. Our teaching and learning materials have the survivor voice at their core,and can serve as a model for others who want to educate about the Holocaust.

In England, teaching about the Holocaust has been a mandatory part of thehistory curriculum since 1991, and usually occurs in year nine, when studentsturn 14. The Holocaust is also often covered in other subject areas, such as re-ligious education and English. Despite the mandatory nature of Holocaust ed-ucation in the history curriculum, teachers are provided with no officialguidance on what to include, how long to spend, or how to approach teachingthe Holocaust. Moreover, the U.K. has a free market for school textbooks, withno standardization or governmental approval; as a result, teachers are free tochoose any teaching materials they wish.

The lack of clarity and structure regarding Holocaust education is reflectedin findings described in the Centre for Holocaust Education’s report, “Teachingabout the Holocaust in English Secondary Schools” (2009). Its large-scale sur-vey revealed a commitment from teachers to address this important subjectbut suggested they had many questions about how to cover the Holocaust ef-fectively, with limited time and resources. Our research also revealed widerchallenges for Holocaust educators: namely, the choice of resources used inclassrooms. Seventy-six percent of teachers used feature film in their class-room, while only 25 percent used what might be seen as more authentic his-torical sources, such as inviting a survivor to speak at their school. This raisesa wide-ranging pedagogical issue: With limited classroom time to spend teach-ing and learning about the magnitude and breadth of the Holocaust, how dowe ensure that the authentic survivor voice is present, over and above the useof feature film? After all, feature film might provide good entertainment withneatly defined events and characters, but does it portray the reality and nuanceof a personal experience?

By Kay AndrewsHow testimony is bringing the authentic survivor voice

to Holocaust education in the United Kingdom

teaching the Holocaust

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Holocaust survivor Leon Greenman

Kay Andrews is a lecturer at the Institute of

Education’s Centre for Holocaust Education,

University of London. For a full biography,

see page 2.

In response to our research findings, wehave implemented a national, continuing pro-fessional-development program (CPD) forteachers. More than 800 have already partici-pated in this program; it features testimony asa key element—including the testimony ofLeon Greenman, which is preserved in the In-stitute’s Visual History Archive.

Leon, who was British-born, married aDutch woman in 1935 and remained in theNetherlands; in his testimony, he recalls meet-ing his wife for the first time and their subse-quent marriage. We chose this recollection,captured on video, to be the first testimony seg-ment teachers see in our program, because ourresearch revealed that of 35 potential topics,Jewish life before the Second World Warranked 31st and was among the least likely top-ics to be covered. Our “Jewish life before thewar” session encourages teachers to see Jewishpeople as subjects rather than objects, of thelater regime. After watching Leon’s light-hearted story of meeting and marrying hiswife, many teachers have commented on howit changed their perception of those who be-came victims of a genocidal regime.

In addition to our emphasis on the prewarnarrative for Holocaust education, we have de-veloped classroom materials that address sur-vivors’ postwar experiences. In fact, the finaltraining session of our program for teachers isdevoted to this theme, which we explore throughLeon’s testimony and through that of anotherU.K. survivor, Anna Bergman. Far too often inschool textbooks, liberation and life after theHolocaust are represented through Allied prop-aganda images, with little reflection on the day-by-day process survivors endured. Our finalsession, called “Liberation and Home,” dealswith the desolation and loss so many faced asthey tried to find family after the war. Teachershear how Anna lost hope when she returned toPrague, while Leon recalls grappling with life inhis father’s house many months after liberationfrom Buchenwald; faced with photographs of hiswife, Else, and son, Barney, who were murderedat Auschwitz-Birkenau, Leon “had a damn goodcry” before leaving the house to look for othersurvivors. As a way to ensure that historical in-quiry goes further than a single account, Leon’stestimony is given additional context throughdocuments, photographs, and news reports

Teachers respond

Wash, Rinse,Don’t RepeatBy Michelle Sadrena ClarkHow do you engage students when their

favorite subject can be themselves?

“WE LEARNED ABOUT that last year” is somethingyou never want to hear your students say, butmine did. What concerned me most was that theywere talking about the Holocaust, as if it were justanother history topic to cover once and then check

off the list. How could I encourage my students to take an interest in the Holo-caust? How could I help them to understand its implications for all of us, anddraw from it lessons that would have a positive effect on their character?

Testimony is unique because it gives students a chance to “meet” a survivorwho otherwise couldn’t be there. I remember meeting Renée Firestone after Iwatched her testimony; when we finally stood face to face, it was as if I wereseeing a friend. I wanted the IWitness activity I had built, titled Wash, Rinse,Don’t Repeat, to give my students that same connection with survivors, andthrough it, a sense of how the past is connected to the present, and how eachof us is making history, every day, whether through action or inaction. Throughthe study of history, we see so many tragedies that we end up repeating, eventhough we’re supposed to learn from our mistakes. So the purpose, apart fromteaching history, was to encourage my students to speak out about current civil

and human rights issues.In high school, most students’ favorite subject is themselves, andthe topics they find most engaging are often those that hit closest

to home. Wash, Rinse, Don’t Repeat is flexible enough that stu-dents can focus on topics of their choice, and the experiences

of Holocaust survivors are diverse enough that there are al-ways potential points of connection. Some students

were interested in women’s rights, others on reli-gious persecution; our school is close to the bor-

der with Mexico, so family separation throughdeportation and racial profiling received a lot

of interest in my class. One of my student’sproject focused on children who had

been left without parents and who hadeventually been adopted; for her this

was personal, because she also had beenadopted. Her connection to these survivors

who were adopted was very different from

Michelle Sadrena Clark is a teacher at High

Tech High North County in San Marcos, Calif.

For a full biography, see page 2

pastforward Summer 2013 15Michelle Sadrena Clark

relating to the events that he experienced per-sonally in the year after he was liberated.

The reaction of teachers and young people tothe testimony we use in our programs has beenimpressive. Many suggest that they feel theyhave come to know the individuals whom theyhave “met” during a number of sessions. Oth-ers have commented on how such an approachallows them to build over time a deeper histor-ical understanding of the Holocaust. Added tothis, teachers and students have wanted towatch entire testimonies to further understandeach survivor’s personal experience.

Instruction and learning about the Holo-caust can be a daunting task for teachers, espe-cially when many have had no formalHolocaust education. Our program providesclassroom materials that demonstrate thebreadth of history while keeping the personalsurvivor voice at its core. Such an approach en-gages young people with an individual’s lifeand places their story in the wider context ofthe complex events of the Holocaust.

Leon Greenman and Anna Bergman’s testimonies can be viewed online at: vhaonline.usc.edu

that of a student who wasn’t adopted. It wasvery personal and relevant.

Much of the learning at our school empha-sizes social justice, and some students choseto focus on human trafficking and forced labor.In every case, there are Holocaust survivorswhose testimonies can inspire deeper thinkingand discussion about these issues. It is onething to get students to transform thinking, itis another to get those students to actuallytransform their actions. With testimony I be-lieve consequences are much more personaland emotional, and it inspires thought and ac-tion among my students.

I’m already designing another classroom ac-tivity in IWitness, called Hope and Humanity.Through it, I want to encourage my students toconsider the positive choices people made dur-ing the Holocaust, often in spite of risk to them-selves. In the introduction to the activity, I usethe analogy of how telling someone “don’t thinkabout an elephant” makes it hard not to thinkabout an elephant. In other words, if we only payattention to negative behaviors—what peopledid wrong—we won’t learn positive, alternativebehaviors. I hope that if we also give mind topeople who modeled positive behavior, studentswill be inspired to act in the same way.

To view examples of student works created in IWit-ness visit http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/Share/

Issues in focus

Standing at the IntersectionBy Kori StreetConsiderations when using testimony in education

IN THE WAKE Of recent recognition of USCShoah Foundation’s educational website IWit-ness, a colleague pointed out to me that none ofthe organizations had recognized our work inteaching the Holocaust, and wondered if I wasconcerned. These welcome achievements high-

lighted the work that the Institute’s education team is doing in terms of digital,media, and information literacy, and, of course, providing compelling content,but did not speak to the specific expertise in teaching about the Holocaust. Myanswer to my colleague was that although I was not concerned, I did respect theimpetus that had prompted the question. While our educational focus is on theeffective and appropriate use of testimony in the digital classroom, we are work-ing with the testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. That placesus in the field of Holocaust education. At the same time, the nature of audio-vi-sual testimony requires that our online education programs address the 21st-century skills students need to learn. Working with testimony effectively in the

Kori Street is director of education for the USC

Shoah Foundation. Her current work focuses on

the preservation and educational use of survivor

testimonies. For a full biography, see page 4.

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Kori Street, the Institute’s director of education


classroom requires that we live at the intersec-tion of critical literacies and the historical con-tent we provide. It also requires that we occupythat space with integrity and great care.

There is debate—and perhaps no smallamount of anxiety—about the nature of Holo-caust education and remembrance in schools.The Holocaust education community, ofwhich we are a part, is faced with the loss ofthe living memory of the witnesses, who havecontributed so fully to the classroom experi-ence, and the attendant questions about howto best address that loss. At the same time,teachers around the world are faced with com-peting and increasing demands on their timeand focus. In her article in this issue of Past-Forward on page 14, Kay Andrews refers to astudy published by the Holocaust EducationCentre at the Institute of Education, Universityof London, which suggested that even with allof our efforts, almost 75 percent of teachersand students learn what they know about theHolocaust from cultural sources—featurefilms, novels. Teachers indicated that they didnot feel they had the specific knowledge, nordid they have the time to address the topic wellenough or know how to assess the wide varietyof resources available to them.

Two broad approaches frame methods inHolocaust education. The first, studying theHolocaust as unique history, treats the Holo-caust as a historical subject, and is understoodfor its uniqueness as a historical moment in itshistorical context. The other focuses on study-ing the Holocaust, and other genocides, as uni-versal explorations of human behavior.

Alvin Rosenfeld makes a case for continuingthe “unique” treatment of the Holocaust whenhe says, “The historical character of the crimesthat we have come to call the Holocaust is opento alteration under the pressures of a broadrange of cultural forces, including political ex-pediency, commercial gain, and popular tastesand preferences.”

He is concerned that despite great fascina-tion for the crimes of the Holocaust, they aresubject to unconscious denial. Rosenfeld’s the-sis is that our prime obligation is to remem-ber—a remembrance carefully enumeratedand understood with historical integrity. Un-derstanding the Holocaust as a historicalevent—not for shedding light on the present—is key to properly remembering it, and to dootherwise leads to what he identifies as dimin-ishment or unconscious denial.

But educationalists have conducted a widerange of research that supports the positivecontribution of Holocaust education to devel-

oping students’ understanding of aspects of cit-izenship in honing their awareness of humanrights issues and genocides, the concepts ofstereotyping, scapegoating, and general politi-cal literacy, such as the exercise of power inlocal, national, and global contexts. Scholars inthis field would say that building specific his-torical knowledge is part of a process in whichstudents then go on to make cognitive links tothe challenges and implications the eventspresent. The importance of knowledge cannotbe underestimated but as one side of respon-sible citizenship. Developing critical thought,

respectful attitudes, and thoughtful actions isan outcome of that acquired knowledge.

Driven by the testimonies’ visual nature, theInstitute’s work reflects an acknowledgment ofboth of these perspectives. In order to workwith audio-visual testimony effectively and eth-ically, it is imperative that one understands thecontent’s historical context and specific detail.What that means in terms of the current col-lection is that users must understand the his-torical context of the Holocaust and the 20thcentury. As the Visual History Archive growsand includes testimony from other genocides,those historical moments will require theirown, unique historical understanding. At thesame time, students and teachers who engagewith the many sources of media in their dailylives will construct their understanding basedon their existing beliefs, worldview, and knowl-edge structures. They will draw conclusionsbased on what they view and what they deemis relevant to them. Our research has indicatedthat when students watch testimony, there is astrong link between knowledge and empathy,critical thinking, and responsible civic engage-ment, between respect and inspiration. Theyimmediately connect with and hear relevancein the voices to which they are listening.

Today’s students are mobile and con-nected—to one another and to their technol-ogy. Whether for social, recreational, oreducational purposes, they are deeply engagedwith visual and digital media. Even those whodo not have regular access to digital medianeed the skills and resources to stay competi-tive. To reach them where they are and to havemeaning in their world, we develop teachingand learning applications that capitalize ontheir mobility, creativity, and connectedness.

Today’s 21st-century students must be literatein digital, visual, and media literacies. Theseare new layers, which build upon and are justas important to students today as are tradi-tional subjects such as reading, writing, andnumerical literacy. It is not enough to teachthem to search; students must know how tounderstand the value of what they find,whether in digital, visual, or textual form. Theyalso need to understand the meaning of whatthey have found in the context of the worldaround them, and then have the ability to actbased on that comprehension.

Educators are looking for ways to engagestudents at this intersection of literacies andskills in ways that are relevant, sustained, andtransformative. In many ways, it is this searchthat provides an audience for sites such asPowerMyLearning. It is in the present that wemake sense of the past. Engaging the testi-monies within the context of the presentmeans living at the intersection of multiple lit-eracies, historical specificity, personal empathy,and our wired, complex world. If we can liveand learn in that intersection, we will have theability to bind our communities together.Young people do respond in a very personalway to the compelling stories among the voicesin the Visual History Archive. As they listen tothose voices—one at a time—they are con-nected to the past, engaged in their present,and as a result, contribute to making a betterfuture for all of us.

For further reading: P. Cowan and H. Maitles(Eds), Teaching Controversial Issues in theClassroom Key Issues and Debates Continuum.Kahn, M. (2010); Alvin H. Rosenfeld, The End ofthe Holocaust. Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress. (2011); PowerMyLearning: http://www.powermylearning.com

Recognition for IWitnessAccreditation from the International Society

for Technology in Education (ISTE) aligns

IWitness with National Education Technology

Standards. Teachers, a site that reviews educa-

tional websites, recommended IWitness. The

American Association of School Librarians rec-

ognized IWitness as one of the leading sites

for teaching and learning.

“Working with testimony effectively requires that we live at the intersection of critical literacies—including digital and media literacy, and historical content—including history, the Holocaust, and other genocides. It also requires that we occupy that space with integrity and great care.”


HREE YEARS AGO, the Institute forMultimedia Literacy, a research unitwithin the University of SouthernCalifornia’s School of Cinematic

Arts that is designed to study new forms of liter-acy in a digital culture, embarked on a collabora-tion with USC Shoah Foundation—The Institutefor Visual History and Education. The goal of thecollaboration was to develop best practices forteaching students how to work with clips of tes-timony from the Institute’s Visual HistoryArchive. As the Institute continued to expand itsoutreach to high school students, undergradu-ates, and graduate students, and as studentsbegan to watch, edit, combine, and reconfigurethese clips, what did they need to know?

Our attention to this topic stemmed from thesimple fact that our students come to us nowwith a tremendous amount of experience view-ing, sharing, creating, and uploading onlinevideo. Indeed, the ability to take images, manip-ulate them, and recirculate them is shared byanyone with access to a computer and the Inter-

net. However, much of the material that our stu-dents engage with in this context is viral video,which tends to spark laughter or shock moreoften than contemplation; it moves quickly fromsource to source as short-lived memes, and itmay be valued more for its spreadability than forits intellectual complexity. The result is a kind of“video vernacular” and a correspondingly cava-lier attitude toward visual material viewed online.

This attitude isn’t appropriate when studentsare invited to engage with sensitive materials.As students began to work with clips of testi-mony, we needed a method that teachers couldadopt and which would inspire careful attentionto notions of truth, care, and respect. We knewthat this attention could only come through thedevelopment of an understanding specifically ofediting and what it means to excerpt a clip, placeit in juxtaposition with another clip, and even tocompile a sequence of excerpted clips that, intheir placement, create meaning. With this inmind, together we developed the notion of eth-ical editing: the act of selecting, combining, and

presenting clips of testimony in a manner thathonors and respects the truth, considers inter-viewees’ possible vulnerability, and acknowl-edges the viewers’ trust.

We reasoned that if students could apply thisdefinition to their work with clips of testimony,not only would their own thinking about thematerial grow more nuanced, but it would alsoresult in more careful video projects. To helpstudents consider the ethics of editing in moredetail, we also introduced basic concepts fromdocumentary filmmaking.

First, documentary films endeavor to repre-sent the truth. They make a “truth claim.” View-ers accept this claim as a kind of contractualobligation on the part of the filmmaker, and thefilmmaker in turn struggles constantly with acommitment to convey the truth. This appliesto working with clips of testimony and creatingsequences that use this material.

Second, documentary filmmakers must es-tablish a point of view toward the material pre-sented. There are many ways to frame

FromViralVideoto Ethical EditingWhat students need to know about working with testimonyBy Holly Willis

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Multimedia literacy


documentary material: Do you simply present aseries of clips, without any overt perspective,and leave interpretation to your viewers? Or doyou make your perspective clear, either throughtext or voice-over, so that your viewers will makeno mistake with regard to your intentions? Doyou use music to help produce an interpreta-tion, or suggest your own perspective? Whatabout slow fades, or a zoom to highlight a par-ticular aspect of a shot? Each of these activitiescontributes to the creation of point of view.

Third, documentary filmmakers establish aparticular stance, or attitude, toward their mate-rial. This is far more subtle than point of view,and reflects the maker’s opinions, emotions,and ideological positioning. For this concept, weinvited students to consider their own stance,and to think about how they feel about the ma-terial they are presenting, not simply what theythink. Clips of testimony can incite an array ofcomplex and often conflicting emotions, whichin turn will affect a student’s stance, and the de-cisions regarding what is presented and how.

These require some reflection.As participants in a visual culture, we ap-

proach the act of editing with a great deal of skillalready, even if we have never once made an ed-itorial decision. We know almost intuitively howto combine images to tell a story, and how to usebasic editing techniques—such as dissolves,fades, and fast cutting—to convey meaningusing our culture’s visual vernacular. However,we believe that is important to take the opportu-nity presented by the special circumstances ofclips of testimony in the Visual History Archiveto slow down, to analyze, to question, and pos-sibly to invent a new visual language appropriateto the kinds of meaning-making particular tothe testimonials. With this in mind, we con-

cluded our various working sessions with teach-ers by pointing to a key challenge: How can wemobilize the excitement and enthusiasm of ourstudents as they engage with video in an entirelynew context to imagine a visual language spe-cific and appropriate to their projects? With thisin mind, we look forward to the emergence of anew genre of video essay built on clips of testi-mony and informed by ethical editing.

“As students began to work with clips of testimony, we needed amethod that teachers could adopt and which would inspire careful attention to notions of truth, care, and respect. With this in mind, together we developed the notion of ethical editing.”

Holly Willis is director of Academic Programs for

the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and direc-

tor of the Media Arts + Practice PhD program in

the School of Cinematic Arts at the USC. For a

full biography, see page 4.

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Game changerU.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan photographed in his office by Michael Bonfigli


PastForward special feature

Stephen Smith: There is a lot of focus on deficiencies in the education system. What goodnews is there that people might not know about?

Arne Duncan: There is actually an extraordinary amount of progress and momentumin spite of all the challenges we face; I am actually very optimistic about where we aregoing. In the past three or four years, educators’ jobs have been preserved, we haveseen 46 states raise their internationally benchmarked standards, which no onethought was possible, and we have seen many states step up with creative responsesto No Child Left Behind. One of the things I am most proud of is the increase in PellGrant recipients: young people who are going to college and using our grants to helppay for it. Many are first-generation collegegoers. We’ve gone from 6,000,000 Pell re-cipients in 2008 to almost 10,000,000, so more than a 50 percent increase. There isclearly still a heck of a lot of work ahead of us, but there is so much to be proud of andthankful for, and to give us reason to be very hopeful about our ability take educationin the United States to a different level.

Smith: We are in the midst of a rapid transition from print, paper, and pencil to computers,tablets, and digital content. What changes must occur to ensure that teachers keep pacewith that integration of technology today?

Approaching the Tipping Point:

Technology inEducationA conversation with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Duncan greets students. “The more we engage our students’ hearts and minds when we’re teaching, the more it will resonate, the more it will stick, and the more they will think.”


Duncan: Well, obviously it is so critically impor-tant that our teachers lead this movementrather than be followers. I think technology hasthe ability to be an absolute game changer to in-crease equity—to help kids who historicallyhaven’t had as much opportunity to increase ex-cellence—and to have kids be able to work in apersonalized learning environment. In termsof teacher training and support and profes-sional development, technology brings a wealthof resources, not just from across the countrybut across the globe, which could not have ex-isted five or 10 years ago. So in terms of empow-ering teachers, in terms of engaging studentsand parents, I am so hopeful about what tech-nology can do. Part of my frustration is thatchanges in education have always come soslowly. Technology has already transformedhow the world does business; it has trans-formed how everyone interacts socially; it hasliterally led to democratic revolutions. Technol-ogy has yet to change education, but I think weare approaching the tipping point.

Smith: Your national education technology planrecommends preparing students to be ethical par-ticipants in a globally networked society. Can youdescribe what your vision is for that and what itwould look like?

Duncan: What we want to do is not just physi-cally but virtually connect young people to their

peers across the globe. I think in an increasinglyinterconnected world—a “flatter world,” wherethe economies of so many countries are interre-lated—students are more comfortable and con-fident working with peers from not just theirdistrict, state, or country but from around theglobe. This ability to interact globally puts themin position to be much more successful as theymature and grow older. Now fostering theseconnections in a way that makes sense is clearlyimportant. But I think the chance for this expo-sure, which didn’t exist a few years ago, is amaz-ing. Just one personal example: Last year in mydaughter’s class—she’s in a local public elemen-tary school—they were Skyping with childrenfrom Mali. When I was in school that wouldhave been inconceivable. And it’s the kind of ex-perience my daughter will never forget; it broad-ens her horizons in significant ways. What anamazing opportunity for her and her class-mates, and for the students in Mali. We want tocreate more of those opportunities, and not onlyfor high school students or college students.What are we doing for 6- and 7- and 8- and 9-year-olds to provide those kinds of opportuni-ties? Let’s bring that opportunity to youngerchildren as well.

Smith: The USC Shoah Foundation has a freewebsite called IWitness, which lets students andteachers work with video from Holocaust and

genocide survivor interviews. Do you think it is im-portant to learn from survivors and from thesepainful chapters in history?

Duncan: I can’t overstate the importance. If wepaper over or sugarcoat horrific times in our his-tory, I think we do our children a great disserv-ice. Having those honest, difficult, and painfulconversations; having our children grapple withethical issues and choices; allowing them to con-front history in a very real way is one of the mostimportant gifts that we can give to them.

The more we engage our students’ hearts andminds when we’re teaching, the more it will res-onate, the more it will stick, and the more theywill think. The goal of education is not to getchildren to regurgitate facts; I think that miscon-ception is a huge part of the problem. If the goalis to train them to think critically, to ask hardquestions and grapple with very difficult issues,then I think we will empower them to be verysuccessful.

Smith: You have been a real advocate for textbookpublishers to go digital. What are the benefits, andis there a sufficient demand for them to make thattransition?

Duncan: I think it’s come too slowly, but the de-mand is picking up rapidly now. The idea of our8- and 9-year-olds walking around with 30-, 40-,and 50-pound backpacks is ludicrous. It’s ridicu-lous that they have to do that. But if children

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“Technology has already transformed how the world does business;it’s transformed how everyone interacts socially; it has literally led to democratic

revolutions. Technology has yet to change education, but I think we are

approaching the tipping point.”


have access to a device that puts information attheir fingertips—exponentially more informa-tion than I had in my school library while grow-ing up, and information that is updated on acontinuous basis instead of every couple years,when a new textbook is published—why wouldwe not want that for all our children? And whywouldn’t we want that with particular focus indisadvantaged communities, where often theyhave the oldest materials, the oldest textbooks,the least-current and relevant information? Sowe are doing everything we can to expedite thetransition from print to digital. From an inter-national benchmarking position, I keep askingour educators, “Do we as the United States wantto be a leader in this area, or a “lagger?”

Smith: Is there anything parents, teachers, andschool administrators can do at the local level toclose the digital divide for disadvantaged commu-nities?

Duncan: They can be advocates. It’s a more dif-ficult conversation in these tough economictimes, and I understand that, but I think we ineducation are uniquely bad at making necessarychanges. We’re great at starting new programs,but we’re not good at changing course. Thenyou see a district in North Carolina, called Mor-risville, which is not an affluent district by anystretch, but they simply stopped purchasing text-books and put all of that money into technology.

Already they are seeing some remarkable gainsin learning, increases in graduation rates, andreductions in dropout rates. It proves that evenin tough economic times, we have the re-sources. We spend billions of dollars each yearon textbooks, literally billions. If we deploy thosedollars in a different way, we can work throughthe transition from print to digital very quickly.

Smith: Many schools and communities don’t havethe internet capacity needed for audio-visual re-sources like ours. How is this problem being ad-dressed?

Duncan: Making sure schools have enoughbroadband is a huge part of our equality agenda.So we’re working with the Federal Communica-tions Commission, the Department of Agricul-ture—which has some important resources—and across the federal government to close theopportunity gap between schools that have suf-ficient broadband and those that don’t.

Smith: Many of our readers are Holocaust sur-vivors, who have shared their stories in classroomsfor many years. What would you say to them, aswe approach a point in our lives when students willno longer be able to learn directly from the survivorgeneration?

Duncan: I would say thank you from the bot-tom of my heart. Their willingness to bear wit-ness about that horrific time in their lives—to

revisit that time on a regular basis for the ben-efit of younger generations—must be anythingbut easy. But what an impact they have. Theyare opening our children’s eyes and givingthem knowledge that is critically important. Iwant to thank the survivors for their willing-ness and courage to give so much of them-selves to our children.

Smith: Arne, you have been an educator all yourlife in different ways. What gives you the greatestsatisfaction as a teacher?

Duncan: I am always an optimist, because I justknow how much our children want to learn.And one of the joys of my job is getting to travelthe country and go to schools, whether in urbanareas or rural areas, in suburbs or remote, Na-tive American reservations or villages in Alaska;everywhere I go, I am always struck by howmuch children want to learn, want to grow, andwant to be challenged. And I think that the chal-lenge for adults is to make sure that we continueto raise the bar and have the highest expecta-tions. I talk to thousands of kids; rarely do I hearstudents say that they are working too hard.More often, they want us to challenge themmore, and it’s incumbent upon us as educatorsand parents and leaders to listen to what ourchildren are saying.


Testimony and media literacy

Lessons fromKony 2012If participatory politics is the future, media literacy is a mustBy Henry Jenkins

N SPRING 2012, Invisible Children (IC), aSan Diego–based human rights organiza-tion, released Kony 2012, a 30-minute videoabout child soldiering in Uganda. During

its two-month campaign IC anticipated that thevideo might reach half a million viewers; in-stead, it reached more than 70 million withinfour days and more than 100 million in its firstweek. The video’s rapid circulation was heavilyfueled by high school and college students, aswell as church groups. By comparison, Amer-ica’s highest-rated television shows reach 40 to45 million per week, and The Hunger Games, thetop Hollywood blockbuster that week, drew 15to 20 million viewers. Inspired by the video’sown celebration of the power of social media tochange the world, IC’s young supporters haddemonstrated the capacity of grassroots net-works to shift the national agenda.

But Kony 2012 drew sharp criticism frommany established human rights groups andAfrica experts, who questioned everything fromIC’s finances to its “white man’s burden” rheto-ric, and especially for being out of sync with cur-rent Ugandan realities. Amid this fallout, apersonal tragedy incapacitated one of IC’s lead-ers, leaving many young IC supporters unpre-pared to defend their position in the face of such

intense scrutiny. IC’s approach demonstratedenormous “spreadability” (the capacity to spreadits messages) but limited “drillability” (the abilityto “drill” deep into the issues). The media literacymovement in the United States has long beendivided between those who want to foster criti-cal-thinking skills (including a greater skepti-cism toward mass media content) and those whowant to help young people acquire the capacityto produce their own media. The Kony 2012 af-termath demonstrates the importance of com-bining the two, particularly in the context ofstudents’ ability to participate politically.

By the time they exit high school, young peo-ple’s political identities are surprisingly fixed.Those whose parents are politically involved,whose civics teachers bring current events intothe classroom, who are encouraged to volun-teer, and who participate in extracurricular ac-tivities are much more likely to engage in futurepolitical and civic activities than those who lackthese experiences. The practices of participatorypolitics create new gateways into political in-volvement. The Kony 2012 case is one of manyrecent examples of grassroots movements(from Occupy Wall Street and the DREAMermovement in the United States to the ArabSpring movements) that have embraced what

we are calling “participatory politics.” In a whitepaper for the MacArthur Youth and Participa-tory Politics research network, political scien-tists Cathy J. Cohen and Joseph Kahne (2012)define participatory politics as “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals andgroups seek to exert both voice and influenceon issues of public concern.” Participatory pol-itics welcomes diverse involvement, enablesgreater creativity and voice in expressing one’sviews, and provides a gateway toward more tra-ditional political activities, such as voting or pe-titioning. Citing data from a survey of morethan 4,000 respondents ages 15 to 25, theyfound that those who engaged in participatorypolitics (roughly 40 to 45 percent across allracial categories) were almost twice as likely tovote as those who did not.

In some cases, a student’s first political ex-posure might come from a video (such as Kony2012) forwarded to them by friends or class-mates. According to the MacArthur survey, 58percent of American youth forward links orshare information through social networks atleast once a week. A recent study released byGeorgetown University suggests that peoplewho have forwarded socially meaningful mes-sages are significantly more likely to take the

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next steps, such as contributing time andmoney; such acts help grassroots organizationsexpand their “latent capacity,” identifying ca-sual supporters they can mobilize when theyneed to amplify their voice.

For others, their interest might be piqued byan imaginative deployment of references frompopular culture that help them connect issuesto things they already care about. For example,the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) has linked itscampaigns around human rights, equal mar-riage, fair trade, disaster relief, and body imageto metaphors drawn from J.K. Rowling’s best-selling fantasy franchise, asking young peopleto help form “Dumbledore’s Army for the RealWorld.” Do such activities represent the intru-sion of entertainment into politics? Perhaps, butthey also represent the hijacking of Hollywood’spublicity machine for political ends, potentiallyreaching people who have already shut out moreconventional rhetoric. Often, traditional politicsis conducted in a wonkish, insular language thatonly makes sense if you know what’s being dis-cussed; by contrast, the Nerdfighters, a YouTubecommunity organized around a young adult au-thor and his musician brother (Hank and JohnGreen), encourages its followers to identify in-novative ways to “decrease world suck.”

Sociologist Robert Putnam has described therole bowling leagues and other social clubsplayed in encouraging civic participation for theWorld War II generation; people gathered for funand fellowship but forged stronger social ties andfostered deeper community involvement. Fortoday’s youth, volunteering for a traditional or-ganization can feel like a compulsory résumébuilder. But groups like IC and the HPA workhard to intensify friendships, inspire creative ex-pression, and combine hard work with seriousplay. Often, such groups combine strong, charis-matic leaders with decentralized, networkedstructures: Local chapters set their own terms ofparticipation. While some, like the IC, maintainstrong, centralized media-production capacities,others encourage young people to create and cir-culate their own media, including blogs, pod-casts, and videos, reframing their core messagefor their peers. Consider the case of “pepperspray cop,” a University of California, Davis cam-pus policeman who deployed offensive chemi-cals to disperse a group of Occupy supporters.During one weekend, hundreds of Photoshopmanipulations began to circulate online, manyremixing the news photograph with classicpaintings, photographs, or film stills, transform-ing a local incident into an Occupy icon.

While organizations like ICmaintain sharp focus on a singleissue, others, such as the HPA,see themselves as helping toconnect young activists withnonprofit organizations that ad-dress diverse causes and con-cerns. Either way, these groupsare actively recruiting and train-ing young activists, helpingthem master basic practices thatcan support a lifetime of socialchange. Some of these practicesreflect the values of a more par-ticipatory culture, such as help-ing young people construct andshare their own personal narra-tives in ways that dramatize

larger concerns. For example, young DREAM-ers often create videos where they “come out” asundocumented, putting a face on America’sstruggles with immigration policy. Some of thepractices are much more traditional (knockingon doors, manning phone banks), but thesegroups also create contexts in which these activ-ities become more personally meaningful.

By the time IC released Kony 2012, it had pro-duced and circulated 10 previous films; it hadformed local clubs through high schools, col-leges, and churches; it had recruited andtrained thousands of young activists throughinternship programs, summer camps, andconventions; and it had demonstrated the ca-pacity to mobilize those supporters throughlocal gatherings and demonstrations across thecountry. Like the other groups we study, IC sawrecruitment and civic education as the organi-zation’s core mission. Kony 2012 did not “goviral,” rather, IC had developed strategies ofgrassroots circulation that succeeded in reach-ing diverse participants.

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell says that so-called “Twitter revolutions” build on weak socialties and do not motivate participants to put theirlives on the line. Make no mistake: What we aredescribing here is not a Twitter revolution.

Students stick a poster to a pole during “Cover the Night,” part of theKony 2012 campaign by the group Invisible Children, to raise awarenessabout child soldiering in Uganda.

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These groups conduct their activities across di-verse media platforms, including face-to-faceconversation, but they also use social media tocoordinate action across a more dispersed net-work. In the case of the DREAMers, there is astrong commitment to take material risks, withyoung activists facing deportation for sharingtheir immigration status, and some marchinginto immigration offices and web-casting actsof civil disobedience. That said, part of the ap-peal of these groups is that they create a formof politics that works more through consensusthan conflict; this more sociable style of civicparticipation can be enormously appealing to ageneration often sickened by today’s harsh par-tisanship. Yet, for this very reason, IC’s youngsupporters seemed remarkably unprepared forthe criticism that Kony 2012 drew from so manyquarters. Members of traditional, party-basedand advocacy groups prepare themselves toconfront oppositional perspectives. But whenthe core leadership turned inward to deal witha personal tragedy, IC’s young supporters wereleft to track down information and construct ar-guments against the mounting attacks. In somecases, they rose to the occasion, demonstratinga great capacity to seek and deploy informationquickly. But in others, they lacked the criticalskills needed to address skeptical classmates orfamily members. This crisis is consistent witha core finding of the MacArthur survey: 84 per-cent of young people interviewed said that theywould “benefit from learning more about howto tell if news and information you find onlineis trustworthy.”

We would not consider someone literate ifthey could read but could not write; the coregoals of the media literacy movement shouldbe helping young people to acquire the skillsand competencies they need to meaningfullyand critically participate in their culture. Par-ticipatory politics represents a powerful modelfor how civic groups might empower youngpeople to deploy skills they have developed asfans and gamers to make a difference in theworld. But to be truly effective, those produc-tion capacities must be coupled with core train-ing in how to assess credibility, how to weigharguments, and how to rebut criticisms of yourposition. Teachers, librarians, and other educa-tors have a core role to play in helping studentsfoster these critical literacy skills.

The Digital divide

PowerMyLearningBy Elisabeth StockAn opportunity to close the achievement gap

may be just a few clicks away

AMERICAN EDUCATION is at a moment in historywhen technology offers a spectacular opportunityto do something new and different. It also has thepotential to address gaps—perceived and real—in student achievement and success. I’m sureyou’ve heard something like this before—but Isuggest that the technology has finally arrived.

Any teacher or parent can, with the proverbial “click of a mouse,” go onlineto find a resource that can help his or her children learn just about any topic,and learn it in a way that addresses their individual learning needs. Studentson their own can find online activities that can help them catch up if they’refalling behind in school or push ahead if school is just not challenging enough.

So what’s holding back a tidal wave of learning and achievement, particularlyin underserved communities? Three things: (1) tools to make it easier for stu-dents, teachers, and parents to find the right online activities and use them ef-fectively; (2) training to ensure that all the key players in the learningprocess—students, teachers, and parents—are armed with the skills they needto use digital learning to raise achievement; and (3) access to technology andbroadband at home. Tools, training, and access are the ingredients that enableteachers to improve their instructional practices in the classroom and extendstudent learning beyond the classroom walls. These are the ingredients that helpstudents to become more engaged and self-directed in their learning. These arealso the ingredients that draw parents in to the learning process and enable themto better support their child’s education.

One of the challenges of the Internet is assessing the dizzying array of choicesavailable for everything, from shopping and news to learning. This is a challengethat can create a barrier to its use. On Computers for Youth’s (CFY) Pow-erMyLearning.com site, students, teachers, and parents can easily find and usethousands of carefully vetted digital learning activities from across the web.These activities are organized by grade, subject, and learning standard. A playlistfeature—just like on iTunes—enables teachers to put these activities into a learn-ing sequence in order to differentiate learning for students within their class.

We are already seeing the effect on student learning. At one of our partnerschools in a underserved neighborhood in New York City, Ms. Wright, ateacher, worked with several struggling students but had not previously usedtechnology in a significant way. She introduced PowerMyLearning to some ofher students in a benign way, not as an assignment or assessment, but just adifferent approach for her kids to try on their own. What she saw was remark-

Elisabeth Stock is CEO and co-founder of

Computers for Youth (CFY), a national non-

profit that helps students, teachers, and parents

use digital learning to improve educational

outcomes. For a full biography, see page 4.

Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Com-

munication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and

Education at the University of Southern Califor-

nia. For a full biography, see page 3.


Middle school teacher uses PowerMyLearning toengage and energize his students in the classroom.

able—students who had previously withdrawnfrom studies were suddenly re-energized bythe range of fun and engaging educational ac-tivities they could access and explore on theirown. The enthusiasm extended to the home,where students continued to use the activitieson their own, since they had the requisite on-line access. Parents were also drawn into thedigital learning world and felt better able tosupport their children, having received trainingon the digital resources available.

In a September 2012 New York Times article,columnist David Bornstein highlighted thesuccess the school was having, particularlyamong struggling students. The school saw thepercentage of last year’s sixth graders withlearning disabilities who met or exceeded stan-dards in math increase by 36 percent. The per-

centage of students who had been below stan-dard decreased from 23 to zero. Additionally,Bornstein found that teachers in the schoolwere having a much easier time differentiatinginstruction by practicing what educators call“blended learning.” He also found that the stu-dents were taking far more ownership of theirown learning in response to the differentiatedinstruction in the classroom and the wide-spread access to PowerMyLearning outside theclassroom, including in their homes.

What’s so exciting is that we are really just atthe beginning of what can be a real transforma-

tion in teaching and learning. The quantity andquality of digital learning activities is growing,opportunities for broadband access are becom-ing more prevalent even in underserved com-munities, and today’s teachers, students, andparents are more eager to embrace digital learn-ing than ever before. If we focus on providingthe right tools, training and access, this trans-formation could propel educational achieve-ment across the United States and across allincome levels. A new and real opportunity toclose what has been a daunting achievementgap may be just a few clicks away.

“We are at the beginning of what can be a real transformation in teachingand learning. The quantity and quality of digital learning activities is growing…and today’s teachers, students, and parents are more eager to embrace digital learning than ever before.”

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Teachers respond

vides an exceptional opportunity for studentsto connect with Holocaust survivor testimonyand construct their own knowledge, in a medi-ated environment. This application of learningtheory demonstrates that interactive activitiesin which learners play active roles can motivateand engage students more effectively than pas-sive learning activities. At a time when it’s be-coming increasingly difficult for teachers toarrange classroom visits with Holocaust sur-vivors, students can log into IWitness and in-teract with a set of testimonies and video clipsthat can be localized for their interests and as-signments. Over the course of our semester,my cohort of doctoral students analyzed IWit-ness for various factors, such as usability, po-tential as a new technology in the classroom,and barriers to instruction.

In the climate of teaching 21st-century skills,it is imperative that students have the opportu-nity to utilize constructivist approaches tolearning through the use of various resources,both primary and secondary; IWitness providesa learning environment to accomplish thisgoal. Technology for the sake of using technol-ogy is not an effective strategy in the secondaryclassroom. Students are not interested in sim-ply reading or looking at pictures on a com-puter. There is educational value in havingstudents engage more actively with technologythan the more passive strategies of the past.Using Web 2.0 tools is a highly effective strat-egy, especially when used from a constructivistperspective. Allowing students to make senseof the information and to participate and de-velop their own learning is a necessary out-come in 21st-century learning.

As a whole, we found that IWitness had a veryintuitive user interface. Searching was straight-forward, as was saving clips. The integration ofsecondary resources, such as the United StatesHolocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopediaand Yad Vashem’s Holocaust Resource Center,as well as links to outside resources, was recog-nized as an exceptional element. This providesstudents with a clear avenue to other highlycredible sources from which to build theirknowledge. At that time, there was a differentvideo editor in the platform, which was difficultto manage. A new-and-improved video-editortool has since been implemented in response toearly-user feedback.

IWitness has endless potential for use in thesecondary classroom, but there are some pos-sible barriers to widespread integration.Through the use of IWitness, students beginto learn and apply the principles of digital citi-zenship. Because much of our interaction now

The View from Insidethe ClassroomBy Brandon HaasA USC Shoah Foundation Master Teacher

puts IWitness to the test

YOUNG PEOPLE AVERAGE 7 hours and 38 min-utes consuming media on a daily basis, and dur-ing that time they are consuming a total of 10hours and 45 minutes’ worth of content by usingmultiple types of media simultaneously.i Inorder to foster 21st-century skills in students,teachers must find new ways to engage them in

our global and digital world. The second generation of the World Wide Web,commonly referred to as Web 2.0, focuses on the ability to leverage onlinetechnologies for active participation, collaboration, and sharing. Web 2.0 tech-nologies provide students in today’s classrooms with unprecedented opportu-nities to develop these skills and be connected. IWitness, the USC ShoahFoundation’s educational website, represents one of these opportunities.

The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive contains in digital formalmost 52,000 audio-visual testimonies from survivors and other witnessesof the Holocaust. IWitness, which has been in development for three yearsand is now in Beta, makes almost 1,300 of those testimonies available in aninteractive environment geared to middle- and high schools students. Giventhe archive’s visual nature, it was perhaps inevitable that the Institute wouldfind an avenue with which to utilize Web 2.0 technology, as it has done withIWitness. The combination of the accessibility of visual history, multimediaactivities, and the ability to focus on a specific discipline, such as the Holo-caust, places IWitness at the intersection of Web 2.0 and Holocaust education;it can be seen as an evolutionary step forward.

Over the past few years, I have had opportunities to work with IWitness indifferent capacities, including as a practicing secondary teacher and as a par-ticipant in the Master Teacher Program, which provides in-depth training onthe use of the Visual History Archive. I have also had the opportunity as a doc-toral student of education at the University of South Florida to analyze variouscutting-edge technological tools designed for classroom use and teacher edu-cation. IWitness was one of them.

Led by Dr. Michael Berson, the course Technological Innovations in SocialScience Education engages in an examination of and dialogue about the chang-ing technological environment and how those changes influence social scienceeducation. Analyzing IWitness revealed that the platform, which is designedfor student-centered learning and founded on constructivist principles, pro-

Brandon Haas is a high school teacher in

Tampa, Florida. He is pursuing a doctoral

degree in curriculum and instruction from

the University of South Fla. For a full


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Master Teacher Brandon Haas received professional development training at the Institute. Now the Institute benefits from his expertise.

occurs in digital space, it is vital that studentsgain an understanding of ethical and moraldigital practices. Students must take care topreserve the integrity of the original testimony,which engages them on a level beyond simplyconsuming material.

Students also become versed in digital liter-acy through the use of IWitness. When prepar-ing to author a video essay, students mustgather resources specific to their topic and as-signment, while taking care to respect the orig-inal message, meaning and intent. Throughthe process of searching and watching testi-mony, and combing through photographs andother documents, students and teachers are en-gaging in quintessential aspects of 21st-centuryskills. Herein lies the unrealized potential oftechnology in the classroom. In an age of edu-cation reform, activists are searching for les-sons that invoke these types of skills andexercises for students. IWitness provides anendless potential for creating the student-cen-tered classroom sought by legislators andschool administration, with the added benefitthat students enjoy and thrive in the process.

The main barrier for IWitness is equal ac-cess, also known as the digital divide. In short,the digital divide is the notion that higher socio-economic schools have better access to technol-ogy, in either number of computers or networkspeed. Early studies into equitable access haveshown that students from lower socioeconomicbackgrounds have much less access to comput-ers and the Internet than high socioeconomic

studentsii and schools, and that the ability levelof usage varies with students in lower socioeco-nomic environments using technology for lessrigorous activities.iii Here, the problem is com-pounded in that it is possibly the students wholack access to the technology who would benefitthe most from the testimonies in IWitness. If astudent is struggling due to a poor home life,

lack of food, or even the uncertainty of wherethey will sleep each night, then what better rolemodels in overcoming worse scenarios thanthese? Survivor stories await discovery in IWit-ness. These testimonies are a treasure trove ofinspiration, and the limited access for some isa major setback in the full realization of thegoals of IWitness.

While there are obstacles to using IWitnessin the classroom, the potential benefits appearto outweigh the potential frustrations. As wemove further into the digital age, IWitness willcontinue to play a vital role in the classroom. Itsconstructivist framework and user-friendly de-sign make IWitness an excellent cross-discipli-nary resource for classroom use. In my capacityas an educator, I look forward to the opportunityto use IWitness in the classroom.

i Rideout, V., Foehr, U., & Roberts, D. (2010). Generation M2: Mediain the lives of 8- to 18-year-olds. Kaiser Family Foundation. Retrievedfrom, http://www.kff.org/entmedia/8010.cfm.

ii Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and dig-ital worlds: Analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes.Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 179–225.

iii Attewell, P. (2001). Comment: The first and second digital divides.Sociology of Education, 74(3), 252–259.

IWitness provides an endless poten-tial for creating the student-centeredclassroom sought by legislators andschool administration with theadded benefit that students enjoyand thrive in the process.

The Challenge of EmbracingChange: A Tribute to Chesley BeaverBy Kim Simon

We are living during a time of transition, a period between generations, when manyHolocaust survivors—our friends and lovedones—are passing on. Death after survivalhas become an unfortunate and regular pres-ence. Yet as an organization, the Institute isanimated by hopefulness, by glimpses of inspiration, and by dedicated people who are driven to affirm life in every day’s effort.

Among the most spirited of those peoplewas Chesley Beaver, a friend and colleaguewho served as our evaluation consultant,helping us measure the change our work

creates in the world. After his sudden deathlast year, we were and continue to be chal-lenged by his absence.

It was our fortune to work with Chesley almost continuously for three years, beginningin 2009 to evaluate the Institute’s first proto-type of IWitness. Throughout our collabora-tion, I marveled at his ability to draw peopletoward him—individuals and groups of allages, backgrounds, and interests. I rememberhow easily he related to students, scholars, ed-ucators, and supporters. People offered feed-back and gave their time even when there was


In memoriam

IWitness Evaluation ReportBy Chesley BeaverThe adoption of a social science approach reflects

the Institute’s commitment to academic rigor and

continued collaborations with scholars

FOR THE INSTITUTE, evaluation is an evidence-based activity directed at col-lecting, analyzing, and communicating information on the workings and ef-fectiveness of IWitness as an educational product. Throughout the testingprocess, USC Institutional Review Board provided the third-party oversightnecessary for academic integration.

Watching TestimonySystem analytics, built into the IWitness application, track the amount of tes-timony watched by users, as well as the sources, i.e., individual survivors orwitnesses. On average, each student tester watched roughly 90 minutes of tes-timony from four or more survivors/witnesses. In total, the 75 student testersused IWitness to watch more than 102 hours of video testimony from 345 dif-ferent survivors or witnesses—representing more than one-third of all the sur-vivors/witnesses included in IWitness at the time of testing.i On average, eachtime a student played a portion of video testimony they viewed approximatelysix minutes and 11 seconds.ii

The depth (amount) and breadth of testimony (number of different sur-vivors/witnesses) watched by students during the classroom tests were sig-nificantly higher than anticipated. Personal Strength to Survive, an activityon the topics of cultural and spiritual resistance, was consistently used in allclassroom tests and system analytics reveal a less than 30 percent overlap inthe survivors/witnesses accessed by students. This suggests that students en-gaged with the activity and “resistance-related” search topics in unique andindividual ways. This user-driven approach to searching testimonies has con-sistently been noted by students as one of the features they like most whenusing IWitness.

Emotional and Cognitive FactorsFurther insights on testimony come from twounaided broad questions asked of students:“What will you remember most about IWit-ness?” and “What did you like most about IWit-ness?” Students overwhelmingly identify videotestimony as the most memorable aspect oftheir experience on IWitness.

Analysis of students’ comments reveals theemotional and personal connections expressedin response to watching testimony. Studentscontinually described the experience of watch-ing video testimony by using words andphrases like “personal,” “feel their emotion,”“feel like I know the Holocaust survivor,” and“people I met.” As one student noted when test-ing the IWitness prototype in April 2010, “… itgoes past the computer screen and feels like she [sur-vivor] is actually telling her story directly to me.”

Videos/testimonies were also what studentsliked most about IWitness. The combination ofthese two elements—testimonies being themost memorable and well-liked aspect of IWit-ness—lays the foundation for significant cog-nitive gains in the educational use of videotestimony.

The potential cognitive gains from usingvideo testimony in the classroom are signifi-cant, and merit further investigation and vali-dation with a larger student population. Pretestand posttest measures of students’ perceivedcognition, combined with comments fromopen-ended/unaided questions, show that IWit-ness enabled a deeper and multifaceted under-standing of the Holocaust. Noteworthy are theways in which students recognized the integrityand validity of primary sources, as well as theunderstanding that comes from multiple per-

little time to give, all because of Chesley’s singular magnetism. He was passionately andintensely interested in people and ideas andeven more so in how ideas could be applied.

In his evaluation reports, we did not just get mountains of data (which we did need, ofcourse). Chesley made sure that there was always a practical application developed fromthe results. A terrific collaborator, he wouldusher us through the information and moveus from passive reading to active understand-ing and application: to equip us with insightthat would lead to improvements in our

methodology and the IWitness platform.Evaluation allows us to ascertain the

value of an activity. It compels us to determineits meaning. We have built a structure for evi-dence-based evaluation of the use of testimonyin education. It is not enough to say that watch-ing testimony has the potential to increaseknowledge, change attitudes, and develop thecapacity to engage in society responsibly. Weneed evidence. We have begun, therefore to de-fine a model to measure attitudinal shifts, aswell as lay the groundwork for long-term stud-ies of the effect of testimony-based learning on

student attitudes. Measuring behavior and attitudes is difficult—a challenge for the entireemergent field of education evaluation—Ches-ley had the intellect, vision, and passion to part-ner with us to innovate and bring both practiceand creativity to the challenge.

A beloved friend and colleague, Chesley’slegacy and memory at the Institute are life-affirming: We will maintain and build uponwhat he helped us to begin—the inspiration,determination, and open-mindedness tosearch for the meaning and integrity of what we do.


spectives on the same topic. As a result, stu-dents who tested IWitness reported a 40 per-cent greater perceived knowledge about theHolocaust compared to the control group.

Opinions, Attitudes, and Stated BehaviorA series of questions in the pretest and posttestonline surveys were designed to gauge students’opinions about the subject matter and attitudes

on the broader topics of racism, stereotyping,and social action. These questions were firstused as part of the Echoes and Reflections curricu-lum studies.iii These findings should be used toprovide directional insights and not statisticalcertainty. Greater statistical validity will be pro-vided, as many of these questions will continueto be asked of students at various intervals fol-lowing their engagement with IWitness.

Most notable from these findingsis the increased interest students ex-pressed in studying the Holocaustafter using IWitness, and the in-creased perceived relevance the Holo-caust has to their individual lives.Nine out of 10 students rated IWit-ness better than other websites usedfor school. Furthermore, 69 percentwant to use IWitness outside theclassroom for other school projectsand/or personal research.

Subject Matter Interestand ImportanceOverall, after students tested IWit-ness, they were twice as interested instudying about the Holocaust as stu-dents in the control group, who werenot exposed to IWitness.iv Further-more, the depth of interest isstronger with students who usedIWitness—the number of studentsin the testing group who were “veryinterested” or “extremely interested”in studying the Holocaust was dou-ble that of their peers in the controlgroup. Students also rated the per-ceived importance of the Holocaust.

While a majority of both groups found studyingthe Holocaust to be important, students testingIWitness reported stronger levels of agreement.

Subject Matter RelevanceStudents who tested IWitness reported signifi-cant changes in how the Holocaust relates totheir lives. For a quarter of students, their expe-rience testing IWitness resulted in the highest

In the numbers Chesley Beaver (right) with students at Alcoa High School, April 2011

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relevance rating possible—a 32 percent increasebetween pretest and posttest ratings for the samestudents. Furthermore, when compared to thecontrol group, students who tested IWitnesswere twice as likely to “strongly agree” that theeffects of the Holocaust are still being felt today.

Social ActionResults from pretest and posttest student surveysshow that students’ use of IWitness significantlyincreased two social-action measures—“speakingup” and “one person can make a difference.”After testing IWitness, three out of four studentsagreed that speaking up against stereotyping isimportant and that one person can make a differ-ence. Most notable is the level of agreement ex-pressed by students relative to these twosocial-action concepts. There was a 30 percent in-crease in the strongest level of agreement(“strongly agree”). Furthermore, students whoused IWitness were 35 percent more likely toagree that, “It is important that everyone chal-lenge racism.” Along with data on student inter-est and relevance, this finding indicates thepotential IWitness has to engage students andconnect them to the subject matter in a relevantand meaningful way.

Stated BehaviorThe last question for students testing IWitnesswas projective—asking students to think if thisexperience will influence how they perceiveand treat others from different backgrounds.While the results require additional longitudi-nal measurements to distinguish intent fromactual behavior, a vast majority stated that theirbehavior would change. Of note, the 19 percentof students who said “no” or “I’m not sure”also had the lowest ratings for subject matterinterest, relevance, and importance.

i Approximately 1,015 full testimonies were contained in IWitness duringthe testing period, February to April 2011.

ii View time refers to session length. In other words, this is the amountof uninterrupted time a user watched testimony each time they clicked“play” within the IWitness application.

iii Echoes and Reflections is a multimedia curriculum on the Holo-caust developed by the USC Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem, and theAnti-Defamation League. Curriculum studies were conducted from2007 to 2009 with 792 students. When interpreting these IWitness find-ings, it is important to consider that data were collected from 136 stu-dents, 75 student testers and 61 students in the control group.

iv Note that the control group was not exposed to IWitness but receivedthe standard subject matter exposure (to the Holocaust) provided byeach school’s existing curriculum.

INITIATED BY SWEDEN’S then–Prime MinisterGöran Persson in 1998, the International Holo-caust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)—formerlyknown as the Task Force for International Coop-eration on Holocaust Education, Remembrance,

and Research—is an intergovernmental body whose purpose is to place politicaland social leaders’ support behind the need for Holocaust education, remem-brance, and research both nationally and internationally. There are currently 31member states. (www.holocaustremembrance.com)

The USC Shoah Foundation’s director of education, Kori Street, invited threeleaders from the IHRA’s Education Working Group to comment on the chang-ing landscape in the field with respect to the use of testimony. Their answers tothe questions posed by our director of education suggest that there are as manyquestions as answers when it comes to utilizing testimony effectively in inter-national programming. There is clearly a lack of agreement on the best practices,as well as a need for further exploration of how to use a currently underutilizedresource in the field. Their thoughts contribute to an ongoing dialogue that theInstitute has been engaged in for many years and indicate a need to continueour work integrating testimony into education.

teaching the Holocaust

A Slowly Evolving LandscapeModerated by Kori StreetInternational educators discuss testimony-

based education: a conversation with Werner Dreier,

Alice Herscovitch, and Karen Polak

For full biographies on Werner Dreier, Alice

Herscovitch, Karen Polak, and Kori Street,

pages 3 & 4.


Kori Street: How would you describe the currentstate of play in the field of Holocaust education(broadly defined) with respect to using testi-mony?

Alice Herscovitch: Despite efforts over thedecades to record oral histories, they remainlargely underutilized. However, the determina-tion of survivors to tell their stories and to assurethat they be used as tools to communicate thehuman consequences and to combat Holocaustdenial has ensured the use of some of these oralhistories in museums, exhibitions, and in ped-agogical tools for teaching about the Holocaust.We are at the beginning of reflections on futureuse and access.

Karen Polak: Generally teachers are still toooften using fictional films about the Holocaustduring lesson time and not aware of the avail-ability and possible impact of the use of testi-monies. Teachers often feel that to invite aneyewitness into the classroom is “the real thing”and using video testimony is second best andtherefore not considered, even when invitingsomeone in person is not viable.

It is still a small group of teachers that has thechance to go to seminars to get to know aboutDVDs and online resources that make testi-

sources must be dealt with in a critical way, al-lowing the learners to approach the subject withher/his own questions.

Herscovitch: Historians continue to debate theplace of oral history and witness testimony as avalid component of history education. Discus-sions continue on memory versus fact, remem-brance versus education. These interpretations ofthe construction of history are not either/or, andthe strengths of each could and should be utilized.

We are far from having defined how these tes-timonies can best be used to achieve these goals,and full-length testimonies, with few exceptions,are not in themselves likely to appeal to broadaudiences, nor are they pedagogical in nature.However, they offer enormous potential for ed-ucation and remembrance work.

Polak: A very positive development of the lastdecade is that memorial sites now are includingtestimonies on a larger scale in their educationalwork—providing visiting school classes with tes-timony to work with before making their visit.

Street: What are the greatest opportunities andchallenges facing the field today and in the imme-diate future, and how does visual history testimonyaffect them?

archival documents and artifacts to relate thehuman story of the Holocaust.

The links to other genocides and contempo-rary crimes against humanity, universal mes-sages related to anti-racism and anti-discrim-ination or citizenship education, and compara-tive approaches remain challenging for educa-tors. Centers need to find means to facilitate theirwork, based on training, support, and tools.

Polak: Survivors born after 1932, and certainlythose born after 1942, will still be able to speakto audiences for another decade. Those who haveno direct memories of the war years but who canspeak clearly of the impact of the Holocaust ontheir lives should be encouraged to do so. Pro-grams that facilitate the matching of schools/teachers to speakers should be supported, andprofessional assistance should be available.

Second-generation speakers should be part ofprofessionally developed programs that givesupport and make clear what is and what is noteducationally sound. Combining first-genera-tion testimony with reflections of later genera-tions on the testimony is an interesting newfield to consider. A (grand) child reflecting on(parts) of the testimony of his/her (grand) par-ent can bring to life the relevance of “remem-

monies available for classroom use. And few ofthem get to feel comfortable to work with testi-mony. It is (far) more demanding of a teacher toselect appropriate testimony and to embed it inhis/her lessons than it is to show a film.

Too often, using testimony is seen as edutain-ment (entertainment with an educational as-pect) that will appeal to students—the ideabeing that students will only be interested if thestory is exciting and visually compelling. Stu-dents are often underestimated. However, tochoose age-appropriate and relevant testimonyto use in class is not an easy matter, and a widerinternational exchange on successful ap-proaches will be welcomed.

Werner Dreier: To the best of my knowledge themain challenge is to develop an integrative his-tory of the Holocaust, which includes testi-monies, diaries, letters, photos, etc. (personal,“subjective” sources) with academic research,thus bridging the dichotomy of personal recol-lection and history writing. All these aspects and

Dreier: The biggest challenge is that the Holo-caust and the years of mass violence in Europebecome a history that is often referred to but thatis not really known.

Visual history testimony opens a window ofinterest that might lead to deeper learningprocesses—the opportunity. Survivors’ narra-tives open questions, instigate an interest, andmight bring along critical appraisals of history.

Herscovitch: In terms of challenges, if we wishto record new testimonies, the time is now.There are questions to be answered regardingaccessibility and use. The documentation andcataloguing of recorded testimonies are chal-lenges for most organizations. The developmentof appropriate tools from long testimonies, theextraction of themes, the link with contempo-rary messages are all challenges. The stated ex-pectation often heard is that recorded testimonywill replace survivor in-class or live testimony.They cannot be equated. It is up to educationalinstitutions to use video testimony, as well as

“The Holocaust and the years of mass violence in Europe become a historythat is often referred to but that is not really known. Visual history testimonyopens a window of interest that might lead to deeper learning processes—the opportunity. Survivors’ narratives open questions, instigate an interest,and might bring along critical appraisals of history.” —Werner Dreier

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Dreier: Diversity in school classes [also] needs tobe acknowledged—pinpointing specific groups(for example, “Muslims”) is more a strategy ofavoidance of the pertinent questions and of deal-ing with diversity than it is helpful.

Street: What is the most important issue facing ed-ucators internationally? And how do you think weneed to answer it?

Polak: Teachers have often not been given theopportunity to develop the skills they need to in-troduce complex and sensitive topics into theclassroom. Too often students are considered “aproblem,” lacking in interest or respect for les-sons on the Holocaust. The answer to the chal-lenge of making the history of the Holocaustinteresting and relevant to students worldwidelies in developing the intercultural skills ofteachers and the notion of teaching throughhuman rights, alongside a good understandingof the history of the Holocaust and how to use avariety of sources (including testimonies) andmethods in their teaching. Teachers all over theworld, with students from many different back-grounds, have engaged their students in mean-ingful studies of the Holocaust. We need tocreate a better method of sharing good practices,above all, with the teacher-training institutes.

Herscovitch: I am not certain that this is a ques-tion that is best answered on an internationallevel. The Holocaust, as all other issues, is un-derstood according to local and regional historyand culture, contemporary issues and their in-terpretation, and national identity. Education isdirectly linked to these understandings. “Perpe-trator” nations in themselves have adopted awide variety of understandings of their roles andface varying challenges. Some former Soviet bloccountries are equating Jewish victims of theHolocaust with victims of totalitarian oppres-sion, or in rare cases, assessing Jews as Sovietcollaborators. “Bystander” nations reflect anotherbroad range of understanding of their role andof Holocaust education (absent, state-mandated,voluntary). Teacher training on this subject is farfrom consistent, even within a given country.

If international reflection on the use ofrecorded testimony is to advance, there need tobe discussion forums, conferences, and debateto advance on questions regarding what is avail-able, how to make it available, pedagogical ques-tions, and how it can be used in different countrycontexts. We should consider brief guidelines(international with country-specific adaptations)on the use of recorded testimony, just as manyHolocaust centers have developed them on theuse of survivor testimony in classrooms.

“The world is small. Remarkable technological advances have created a potential that did not exist 10 years ago. The web and social media outlets offer great opportunities for reducing distance, both geographicaland historical.” —Alice Herscovitch

nonetheless breaks it down to its smallest but es-sential component, impact on human lives.

The emotional charge, the passion that can beinspired by oral history cannot be duplicated byany other means. The USC Shoah FoundationCollection and those of Holocaust institutionsaround the world offer an enormous wealth ofhuman history, which is unprecedented. For stu-dents, understanding history from the perspec-tive of those who lived through it is a uniqueexperience. Oral-history collections offer abreadth of experiences, tell stories of life beforethe Holocaust, and promote understanding re-garding the diversity of Jewish life and experi-ence. They also underscore the importance ofunderstanding antisemitism as a historical phe-nomenon, and help humanize, contemporize,and universalize understanding of the Holocaust.

The world is small. Remarkable technologicaladvances have created a potential that did notexist 10 years ago. The web and social mediaoutlets offer great opportunities for reducingdistance, both geographical and historical. As anexample, a school in Togo created a theatricalreading of letters written during the Holocaustfrom the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Cen-tre’s collection, discovered on our website in theteachers section.

Street: What questions are we not asking or an-swering about the changes in the educational en-

racist education, and human rights education.

Dreier: Testimonies need a historical context. Foran educational environment this asks for inte-gration of testimonies into “ordinary” teach-ing—to combine them with schoolbooks orother learning programs. This also leads to theissue of mainstreaming. Dealing with Holo-caust and survivors’ testimonies should be partof regular teaching.

Polak: We need to address the relevance of learn-ing about the past in relation to the present. Wecan contribute to this by making testimonyavailable in which survivors themselves reflecton this topic. Their voices can be relevant andeffective. We need to look for relevant links be-tween the threat of human rights today and thehistory of the early years of persecution of Jews,Roma and other victim groups (1930s). In sev-eral European countries anti-Gypsyism is a veryserious threat to the lives of Roma minorities,and their human rights are not being protectedby the responsible governments. Other ills andtensions in society, such as antisemitism, a gen-eral atmosphere of increased intolerance, andanti-immigrant or anti-refugee attitudes all in-fluence teaching about the Holocaust. We needto consider how we can contribute to the deeperunderstanding of human rights issues by lettingstudents reflect on this after watching testi-monies that speak to these questions.

bering for the future.”Making testimony available online (well struc-

tured, with advice on how to work with it edu-cationally) is becoming more common andmore easily applicable in the classroom. How-ever, there is still a multitude of educational andpractical challenges (schools with few facilities,the lack of availability of testimony online insome languages).

Herscovitch: There has been evolution, in a pos-itive way, in the collection of video testimony,which has broadened knowledge about and un-derstanding of the Holocaust. With time, hiddenchildren and noncamp experiences have gainedlegitimacy. The actions of righteous individualshave also been documented, and country-specifichistory has been shared. This is due, in part tothe passage of time, but also to the power ofrecording human voices and stories, which lendscredibility to the scope of the Holocaust and

vironment? What questions do we need to thinkabout when using testimony to address thosechanges (or not)?

Herscovitch: We need to be clearer about whatHolocaust education can and cannot do. We arenot sufficiently responding to the rapid changein technology and expectations of students tolearn through new media. Through efforts to as-sure that the historical method is respected, andthat students gain an understanding of history,we sometimes fall short in the area of makinglinks to the present, where relevant, and havingstudents reflect on contemporary issues.

Additionally, although some would disagree,testimonies have an underutilized potential toinspire action. The current North American ed-ucational environment is focused on knowledgeand reinvestment. We need to help educatorsbetter understand the links and distinctions tobe made between Holocaust education, anti-


Testimony & media literacy

Digital ArgumentsBy DJ JohnsonMultimedia authoring can empower young people

to be global citizens who make a difference

AS I APPROACH the end of my third semesterteaching with the USC Shoah Foundation VisualHistory Archive, I continue to be in awe of thetransformative effect of the testimonies on stu-dent development. In witnessing the testimoniesand engaging them in the creation of scholarlymultimedia projects, called digital arguments inthe context of my course, students experience pro-found intellectual and personal growth. Multime-dia authoring with the use of testimony is notwithout its challenges. But the rewards of this in-novative practice are realized in the constitutionof young people who are empowered global citi-zens equipped with the ability to communicateeffectively through media in today’s digital age.

Students must be trained to leverage themedia and digital technologies that surround them in order to make informedstatements, and to speak through the same visual language that expresses andshapes our cultural values, cross-national understanding, and barometers ofwhat is just in the modern world. To that end, multimedia literacy requiresmore than an understanding of the influential power of media. It also neces-sitates an ability to author, to communicate using multiple semiotic registers—visual, aural, and textual—and to argue with critical intentionality.

The pedagogy of the course, “IML340: The Praxis of New Media—DigitalArgument,” is anchored in the use of video archives as a primary tool of in-struction and research, and as a foundational source for multimedia authoring.Each student develops a 10- to 15-minute video project over the semester, whichconsiders a specific issue related to the course’s subject matter. While theseprojects are closely aligned with documentary genres, they are termed digitalarguments in order to underscore the emphasis on effective scholarly argu-mentation through images, sound and text.

From its inception, a fundamental goal of the course has been to engage anintellectual and affective understanding among students about how they are af-fected by world events that occur beyond their immediate social and culturalspace. Whether it be the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as investigated inearlier iterations of the course, or the devastating events of World War II andthe Holocaust, students must comprehend that these crises are not simply phe-nomena that happen “over there,” to some unnamed or unknown, foreign other.In conducting research through the Visual History Archive, and by authoringdigital arguments with the testimonies, students achieve an intimacy with the

survivors’ living histories, which obliteratesanonymity and detachment. In the editingprocess, for example, students listen to the tes-timonies repeatedly in order to discern the mostrelevant and powerful excerpt to use in the for-mation of their arguments.

As their projects develop, students enter intoa dialogic relationship with the testimonies.This engagement facilitates their recognition ofhow they are positioned relative to the ideolo-gies, actions, and inaction that allowed the Holo-caust to take place. What would I have done iffaced with those circumstances? This question be-comes a common refrain in the course. How doI understand my subjectivity as a consequence of so-cially constructed mechanisms of power, privilege,and difference? This critical self-awareness is cen-tral to student learning throughout the semes-ter. The journey that each student takes throughthe course is unique because they choose anarea of inquiry that interests and resonates withthem. They decide what broad questions to takeup, before looking to the testimonies and otherscholarly sources in order to focus their researchand craft pointed, defensible arguments.

Given the scale of the Visual History Archive,it is important to create controlled pathways forstudents to gradually interact with the testi-monies, lest they become overwhelmed. Listen-ing to one testimony in its entirety becomes apoint of departure for students to conceive oftopics and events that intrigue them. Fromthere, students research the Visual HistoryArchive through keyword searches as they re-fine their areas of interest. Once students beginauthoring their projects, I encourage them tostrive for depth, not breadth. Clearly, there areinstances in which a multitude of voices worksbetter to prove a point than a few. But to achievethe course’s goals, I find it more valuable tohave a digital argument that explores the com-plexities and interrelationships among threeprimary testimonies used as evidence thanmany whose treatment is cursory, unsophisti-cated, and poorly contextualized.

I have witnessed many instances of transfor-mative growth as my students learn the value oftheir own voice and how to deploy the commu-nicative power of multimedia to express it. Inlearning through the Visual History Archive,many students have been empowered to speakout against the racism, sexism, homophobia, andviolence that affect their lives. All of the digital ar-guments that have issued from the course standas an intervention against ignorance, injustice,and indifference, as they harness the horrific re-alities of the past to shine light on the continuedneed for social change in our present.

DJ Johnson is a filmmaker, media artist and

educator. For a full biography, see page 3.

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Secondary EducationTeaching the 1994 RwandanTutsi GenocideThanks to Rwandan survivors who gave testi-mony, teachers can guide their studentsthrough a study of the stages of genocide andits aftermath using a new lesson available onthe Institute’s website.

Authored by Rob Hadley and Kelly Watson,two graduates of the Institute’s Master TeacherProgram, “If You Survive, Be a Man: Teachingthe 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide” exploresfour aspects of genocide—warning signs, actsof violence, response, and legacy—from theperspectives of two survivors and a rescuerwho remember the 100 days in 1994 when asmany as 1 million Tutsis lost their lives.

The lesson is available at sfi.usc.edu/education/ifyousurvive

A Conversation with Howard Gardneron Digital Learning and the BrainWorld-renowned intellectual Howard Gardnerjoined USC’s Mary Helen Immordino-Yang todiscuss the question of how our expanding digitalworld—full of information in the form of data—transforms today’s students and their educa-tional needs. The talk, moderated by USC ShoahFoundation on February 11, 2013, advanced theconversation about the appropriate and evolvingset of tools students need in order to transforminformation into knowledge while emphasizingthe moral dimensions of data usage.

Visit http://sfi.usc.edu/gardner for video andphotos.

Carrying the legacy Master Teachers Kelley Watson and Rob Hadley (top) produced the first multi-media classroom lesson based on testimony contributed to the Institute's Visual History Archive by survivors of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency convened the first Rwandan Peace Edu-cation Program meeting in January, in Kigali, Rwanda. Participating organizations (bottom) in-cluded the USC Shoah Foundation, Radio La Benevolencija, the Institute of Research and Dialoguefor Peace, and Aegis Trust Rwanda.


Summer 2013

News&Events

Remembering the HolocaustAn Evening with Anne Frank’sStepsister, Eva SchlossThe Institute and Chabad@USC hosted anevening with Eva Schloss, stepsister and child-hood friend of Anne Frank’s. Like her stepsis-ter, Eva went into hiding in Holland and wasbetrayed, captured, and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Speaking to a capacity crowd at the Univer-sity of Southern California, Eva discussed thediscovery of The Diary of a Young Girl andshared insights into her life and that of herstepsister, whose journal has become the mostwidely read book on the Holocaust.

Watch Eva’s testimony via the Visual HistoryArchive Online (vhaonline.usc.edu) or on the In-stitute’s YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/USCShoahFoundation).

IWitness in AustraliaIn partnership with Education Services Aus-tralia Limited (ESA), the Institute is exploringthe possibility of integrating its IWitness web-site, currently in beta, with the new Australiannational curriculum. The initiative began withsummer workshops in Melbourne and Sydney,where teachers learned how to use the web-site’s searchable testimony database, studentactivities, and video editor. Then, to help deter-mine the feasibility of a national project, twoschools from each city conducted classroom pi-lots of IWitness.

Planning for the next phase of the projectwill begin this spring.

Educators and students: Visit iwitness.usc.edu/sfi to use IWitness beta.

Life after GenocideInstitute Joins Peace-buildingInitiative in RwandaWith nearly 20 years of experience in historicaldocumentation and education based on video tes-timony given by genocide survivors, the Institutehas joined an international effort to establish theRwandan Peace Education Program, an initiativethat will use testimony from survivors of the1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide for peace-build-ing activities and to raise awareness of the pres-sures that move people to ethnocentric violence.

The Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency convened the first RwandanPeace Education Program meeting in January,in Kigali, to articulate the vision, mission, goals,and projected outcomes. Participating organi-zations included the Institute, Radio La Benev-olencija, the Institute of Research and Dialoguefor Peace, and Aegis Trust Rwanda.

Visit tinyurl.com/rpep2013 to learn more aboutthe program.

Institute Hosts AHOMore than 50 attendees from more than 30Holocaust museums and centers in the UnitedStates and Canada convened in January at theUniversity of Southern California campus inLos Angeles for the 2013 Winter Seminar of theAssociation of Holocaust Organizations (AHO).The three-day seminar focused on three centraltopics related to Holocaust survivor testimony:preservation, access, and education.

Many of the participating institutions havetestimony collections, some of which predatethe founding of the Institute. Having recentlycompleted a major effort to digitally preserveall 51,696 testimonies in the Visual HistoryArchive, the Institute was able to bring its ex-perience to bear as a leader in the field.

Visit tinyurl.com/aho2013 to learn more.

Higher EducationSurvivor Testimony inUSC Student FilmsFor the third consecutive year, undergraduateand graduate students at the University ofSouthern California were invited to help shapethe conversation about genocide and humanrights by participating in the Student VoicesShort Film competition.

Students were challenged to incorporate tes-timony into a short film on the theme—Ordi-nary People, Extraordinary Actions—for achance to win cash prizes up to $1,500, as wellas a special screening of their film hosted bythe USC School of Cinematic Arts on March28, 2013. Pictured above is Cecilia De Jesus,winner of this year’s contest.

This year’s contest is part of a series of specialactivities commemorating the 20th anniversaryof Schindler’s List and the establishment of theUSC Shoah Foundation.

Visit sfi.usc.edu/studentvoices to watch the topfilms.


USC Shoah Foundation honored supporter Robert A. Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, at a gala in June 2012. (Top left) Holocaust survivor and educator Renée Firestone; Institute founder Steven Spielberg; Institute managing director Kim Simon; Dr. Shelley Halpain and husband USC Dornsife Dean Steve Kay. (Top center) Mary J. Blige. (Top right) USC President C.L. Max Nikias. (Center) Institute executive director Stephen D. Smith; Lee Liberman, member of the Institute’s board of councilors; and Dr. Leslie Reti. (Right center) WWII liberators. (Bottom left) Jimmy Kimmel. (Bottom center) Honoree Robert A. Iger and Steven Spielberg. (Bottom right) Andy Intrater, a vice chair of the Institute’s Next Generation Council; Karen Shapiro; Stephen D. Smith; and Mickey Shapiro, member of the Institute’s board of councilors. Visit sfi.usc.edu/album/afh2012 to view a photo essay from the event.


ROBERT A. IGER, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, was therecipient of the Institute’s Ambassador for Humanity Award. Steven Spielbergpresented him with the award last June at the 2012 Ambassadors for Human-ity Gala in Los Angeles.

Iger was honored for his philanthropic work and corporate citizenship, andfor being one of the Institute’s earliest supporters. jcpenney was PresentingSponsor of the gala, which was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, with a special musicalperformance by Mary J. Blige. The event took place on the 68th anniversary ofthe Allied invasion of Normandy (D-Day) and was attended by veterans whoparticipated in the invasion and whose testimonies as liberators are preservedin the Institute’s Visual History Archive.

“We are honored to recognize Bob as our Ambassador for Humanity,”Stephen D. Smith, the Institute’s executive director, said. “His support, andthat of The Walt Disney Company, is a great boost to our efforts as we engagestudents emotionally and cognitively with the testimonies. The good news isthat we are finding a shift in attitudes about how to treat others, which gives

us hope that the testimonies can have a transformative effect on perceptions and actions.”Spielberg said, “I really have to thank Bob, because in 1995, he came down to our trailers on the back lot of Uni-

versal, looked at our work, and said without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Count me in.’ The race against time for thesesurvivors…served as a profound example that anything can be accomplished when like-minded people do it together.”

“Telling powerful stories with the help of innovative technology is a Spielberg trademark,” Iger said. “And Ithink it’s part of what makes the Institute such a unique, emerging force for good in the world. They’re takingsome of the most powerful stories and putting them into the hands of teachers and, hopefully, into the hearts ofyoung people. We need this next generation—and the ones that follow—to understand what really happens whenintolerance and hatred are allowed to take root in any culture.”

Watch Robert Iger’s speech at: http://sfi.usc.edu/iger

News & events

Robert A.Iger:An Ambassador for Humanity

One of the Institute’s oldest friends receives its highest honor


USC Shoah Foundation invites middle and high school students to take up the IWitnessVideo Challenge. IWitness.usc.edu brings the human stories of its Visual History Archiveto teachers and their students via engaging multimedia-learning activities.

The contest challenges secondary school students to act on the legacy of Schindler’s Listand do something positive in their community. As part of the IWitness Video Challengeactivity, students will be asked to develop a one- to four-minute video essay with an easy-to-

use video-editing tool on the IWitness web-site, allowing them to link their voices tothose in IWitness who inspired them tomake a positive impact.

Students have until October 31, 2013 tosubmit their video essays.

To learn more visit IWitness.usc.edu.

IWitness Video Challenge

Steven Spielberg, who founded the Institute nearly 20 years ago following his work on Schindler's List,announcing IWitness Video Challenge.

How you can make a differenceOne person really can make a difference. If you would like to support the USC Shoah Foundation, here are some of the ways you can help.

Planned Gifts: Planned gifts include wills, charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, and annuities, and may help you reduce or avoid income, gift, and inheritance taxes.

Cash Donations: Gifts may be made by cash, check, or credit card.

Pledges: Make a gift that is paid over several years, on a payment schedule that is most convenient for you.

Memorial or Tribute Gifts: Honor special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, or births; memorialize a friend or family member; receive a tribute card from the Institute announcing the gift.

In-Kind Gifts: Donate goods or services that fulfill programmatic needs.

For more information, contact: Nicole Watkins, Director of Donor Relations USC Shoah FoundationThe Institute for Visual History and EducationUniversity of Southern California650 W. 35th Street, Suite 114Los Angeles, CA 90089-2571Phone: (213) 740-6001 E-mail: [email protected]

To donate online visit:https://sfi.usc.edu/donate

PastForward Summer 2013

USC Shoah Foundation is dedicated to making audio-visual testimonies with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides a compelling voice for education and action.

Stay in TouchBegin receiving periodic updates and information alerting you to special events in your community, new programs, and the latest Institute news. Send an email to [email protected] “pastforward” in the subject line and your name and address in the body.

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Ambassadors for Humanity Galato benefit USC Shoah Foundation

Honoring Artist & Humanitarian George ClooneyWith Host Jon StewartPresenting Sponsor: TNT

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