IWitness Staff Give Presentation at National Council of Teachers of English

Educators from around the world had the opportunity to learn more about IWitness, USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive educational website, at the Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Nov. 20-23 in Washington, D.C.

Claudia Wiedeman, PhD, Associate Director – Educational Technologies and Training and Brandon Barr, Regional Consultant and Chicago teacher, spoke about “Building Multimodal Literacies Through Compelling Visual History Testimony” on Saturday. The presentation provided participants with an opportunity to learn about teaching with testimony in the English language arts classroom by highlighting the impact IWitness has on fostering students’ 21^st-century literacies. Through hands-on activities featuring the testimonies of Vera Laska and Roman Kent, exploration of IWitness and a discussion of curricular integration possibilities, participants left enthusiastic about further exploring IWitness.

“A team of teachers from various parts of the country who have created a unit as part of their work in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum fellowship program were really looking forward to going back to the classroom to think of ways of using testimony to augment their Holocaust curriculum,” Wiedeman said. “One of the teachers said, ‘It’s so well organized. Incredible!’”

NCTE has over 35,000 individual and institutional members worldwide and focuses on improving the teaching and learning of English at all levels of education. At the NCTE Annual 2014 Convention, teachers of all levels, administrators and other professionals come together to learn about new materials and best practices and hear presentations from award-winning speakers.