Tim’s Blog

In the article “Making History Come Alive”, Howard Levin discusses the effective use of digital video in a high school history class in San Fransisco, USA. Levin describes how over the past two years 10th-12th graders, as he calls them, have been building a public web site that contains hundreds of mini videos on their area of study, the Holocaust. Students have been interviewing Holocaust survivors and then editing their work to culminate into a fully produced short film. Levin explains how video is much more powerful than text as it can capture the emotion and the ambiance of the interview where text cannot. Levin proclaims this to be an amazing resource and further more declares: “Even more amazing is that high school students are creating this resource”.

Despite the fact that this scenario is being played out in a high school setting I feel that it can be effectively adapted into a primary school setting. It is by no way beyond students of a stage 2 and stage 3 level to man a camera and conduct interviews with people. These interviews could then be published onto a blog page or a class page within the schools intranet, for example. The interviews could either be fictional or factual. The possibilities are really quite vast. The use of digital video can give students the opportunity to express emotion and publish work with more expression and emotion than with written work. There are also great opportunities for celebrating students’ productions.

Levin, H. (2003). Making history come alive: Students interview Holocaust survivors and publish their stories. Learning and Leading with Technology 31(3), 22-27.