Making History Come Alive - by Howard Levin

This journal article by Howard Levin, director of technology at the Urban School of San Francisco, is about a new technology program that counts as an elective class for high school students at the Urban School of San Francisco.  The class is called "Oral History," and it consists of students traveling off campus to meet and interview survivors of historical events in order to create an oral history that can be put online and viewed by anyone across the globe.  The first historical event of this new program was the Holocaust.  Students found several survivors with first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and were able to conduct successful interviews to turn into oral histories.  Oral histories are extremely important to the study of history, and the fact that this high school has successfully put together a program where students become the historians is very impressive.  This technologically advanced program is probably not possible at many high schools around the country today, but it is a good look at what is to come in terms of technology being incorporated into education.  Students at the Urban School of San Francisco are all given personal Apple Book Laptops and are able to work on the video-taped interviews from their homes.  This allows for maximum classroom time to be used for instruction on the technological aspects of the project while the students to the majority of the work from home.  The school bought one video camera, one tripod, one light, one umbrella, and the necessary sound equipment for a portable studio to bring to each interview.  To me, this new program at the Urban School of San Francisco is something that every school should strive for in the coming years concerning technology.  However, with today's budget crisis I realize that very few schools would be able to successfully do something like this, but it is definitely something to shoot for in the future.

Q1:  What can I, as a future history teacher, take from this article?

A1:  This article to me symbolizes the way that I think history should be taught and the way that I will strive to teach it.  The fact that high school students have successfully conducted multiple interviews of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust is extremely impressive, and it also shows that history can be very interesting to students.  It is programs like the one from this article that I will study and explore for ideas on teaching the curriculum handed to me in new and innovative ways.

Q2:  The program described in this article is very technologically advanced.  At a school that does not possess the same tools, how can something like this be achieved?

A2:  Unfortunately I do not have the answer to this question, but it is an extremely important one to ask.  As a future teacher, I know that there is a high possibility that I may find myself in a school with little resources in terms of technology, and it will be important for me to find ways to contribute to the school obtaining proper funding and resources for up to date technology.