IWalk Mobile App Named Finalist for 2022 EdTech Awards

USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive IWalk mobile app has been named a finalist in the Cool Tool Mobile App Solution category in the 2022 EdTech Awards, the world's largest recognition program for education technology.

First launched by USC Shoah Foundation in 2019, IWalk is an educational app (available from Apple App Store & Google Play) that connects concrete physical sites with the testimonies of people who were there. For example, visitors to the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto in Poland can use the IWalk app to learn about the area and listen to Holocaust survivors once forced to live within the ghetto walls.

“IWalks make learning dynamic, engaging and they promote critical thinking and foster historical empathy through the use of testimony and place,” said Lesly Culp, Director of Education and Outreach (interim) at USC Shoah Foundation. “We are thrilled to have the IWalk app recognized for its educational value.”

The EdTech Awards were established in 2010 to recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate the most exceptional innovators, leaders, and trendsetters in education technology. IWalk was acknowledged in the middle and high school student category.

This year’s finalists and winners were narrowed from a larger field and judged based on various criteria, including pedagogical workability, efficacy and results, support, clarity, value and potential. 

Past EdTech award winners include Claned, Soundtrap, Blackboard, Discovery Education, DreamBox Learning, Edmodo, Edthena, Flipgrid, Freshgrade, Promethean, Scholastic, Schoology, SMART Technologies.

USC Shoah Foundation currently offers 52 mobile app IWalks in 13 countries and 13 languages. In January the Institute launched a new Virtual IWalk web app that brings the physical sites to the student, with at-home or in-classroom users able to explore historical locations while engaging with compelling survivor testimony without having to travel.

The first of four new Virtual IWalk tours follows in the footsteps of Holocaust survivor and concert pianist Lisa Jura, who, as antisemitism escalated in 1938 Austria, was sent by her parents from Vienna to London on the Kindertransport. Viewers can experience Lisa’s life in Vienna; her trip through the Hook of Holland and Rotterdam; and finally, her arrival to and life in London.

Looking ahead, USC Shoah Foundation plans to continue to expand its mobile and Virtual IWalk web options, with new content that will include testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Armenian Genocide and the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Learn more about IWalks here https://iwitness.usc.edu/sites/iwalk.