COVID-19: IWitness Provides Digital Resources for Educators and Families for Virtual Learning

As local communities assess and adjust to the needs of the world community—and as many schools shift from in-person to virtual classrooms—IWitness and its standards-aligned resources are ready to help educators and parents support students learning.

IWitness is an educational website developed by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education that provides access to more than 3,000 full life histories—testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides—for guided exploration. IWitness brings the human stories of the Institute's Visual History Archive to secondary school teachers and their students via engaging multimedia-learning activities. Designed to be participatory, academic and student-driven, IWitness addresses education standards from the Common Core State Standards Initiative (United States) and the International Society for Technology in Education, among others.

To create a virtual classroom, IWitness provides resources and activities to help educators stupport students’ learning.  These same tools can be adopted by parents seeking to educate their children while temporarily homeschooling.

“We offer our no-cost educational programs and activities to educators  seeking to continue student learning during this challenging moment,” said Dr. Claudia Ramirez Wiedeman, Director of Education, USC Shoah Foundation. “Whether it be a teacher looking for virtual classroom activities or a parent trying to find enriching activities for their child, we are at the ready to virtually supply these materials to anyone.”

Each of the links below contains various activities for educators to assign to students. 

- World History
- US History
- ELA and SEL
- Film and Podcast
- Building Resilience
- Becoming Stronger Than Hate

A short video demonstration of IWitness is available to watch here.

Information about our newly added webinars can be found here.

Tips for using IWitness:
- Registration Information and Educator Quick Tips
- Using Visual History Testimony in the Classroom
- Teaching with Testimony Webinar: Navigating IWitness a (Re)Introduction
- FAQs
- Activity Builder Tips