Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Exploring Digital Media and Empathy with Facing History
<object width="400" height="300" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/3oeada-ng8Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="data" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3oeada-ng8Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3oeada-ng8Y?fs=1&hl=en_US" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object>
Last week we played host to an evening with Facing History – an organization that empowers teachers and students to think critically about history, and to understand the
impact of their own choices. Facing History began in a single school district, Brookline, Massachusetts 30 years ago, and now has operations in 8 countries and has equipped over 29,000 teachers with classroom strategies and resources.
Thursday’s event showcased resources and pilot projects from the organization’s new Digital Media Innovation Network – an initiative to build Facing History’s capacity to integrate digital technology into its resources and to experiment with innovative ways of using new media. Thirty teachers from across the Bay area took part in a workshop that introduced a new study guide for the classroom based around the film, Reporter. Reporter is a documentary following New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof as he travels in the Congo and struggles to find strategies to bring to the region to international media attention.
One of the key issues raised by the film is the impact of digital technology on our empathy and propensity to act. Does ubiquitous digital media help us move closer to issues of global injustice, or does it numb or distance us from these realities? For the second part of Thursday’s event, Marina explored this theme in a panel discussion, where she was joined by Global Lives founder David Evan Harris and filmmaker Eric Slatkin.
The evening ended with presentations from some of the pilot teacher projects of the Innovation Network. John Kittridge of Envision Academy of Arts and Sciences in Oakland and Eileen Vollert O’Kane, Immaculate Conception Academy, San Francisco spoke about their experiences supporting their students in making their own media. And they shared some examples of the powerful stories that their students had captured on film.
Many thanks to our friends at Facing History for a great evening of learning and discussion. Find out more about their fantastic work
here, or by watching the three minute video posted above.