Teachers of twentieth century history and religious education confront the problem of how to teach the Holocaust, one of the most disturbing events of our era. Simply citing statistics and retelling the story of the concentration camps and murder of over six million Jews and other ethnic nationalities and minorities cannot adequately grasp or instill the enormity of this event. To supplement existing accounts of the Holocaust and to dramatize its effects, we believe that new multimedia technology can provide tools to recreate the experience and to provide a better sense of its horror, inhumanity, and magnitude. The multimedia dimension enables students to experience the sounds, sights, and images of history as well as to learn basic facts. Testimonies of ordinary citizens, as well as political leaders, help demonstrate the human and personal dimension of history and to dramatize the effects of historical events on ordinary people. The interactive dimension of new multimedia technology can potentially involve students more integrally into historical research and enhance moral understanding, thus providing powerful pedagogical tools to teach tolerance and promote a multicultural and an anti-racist curricula. Hence, we see the virtue of multimedia technology in providing new tools of both historical documentation and pedagogy that can help reconstruct education for the next century.
Teachers of twentieth century history
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