über_leben

Core features of the practice


  • Organisation:

    Institution name: erinnern.at
    Institution type: Institute for Holocaust Education of the Austrian ministry for education
    Institution URL: http://www.erinnern.at
  • Format:

    Instructional material
  • Target population:

    Students
  • Cost (per practice):

    Free
  • Setting:

    No specific setting required
  • Themes:

    Remembrance education and/or history education, Antisemitism, Xenophobia and other prejudices, Radicalization prevention, The Holocaust and/or other genocides
  • Core activities:

    Group discussion, Written activity, Film viewing, Image analysis, Testimonial

Additional information about the practice


    Target population

  • Number of participants:

    Up to 34
  • Age of target population:

    16-18
  • Additional specifics:

    National/local specifities (e.g. activity targeted to Swedish school students)

    • Components of the practice

  • Topics and objectives:

    Seven Austrian eyewitnesses talk in video interviews about how, despite the most adverse conditions, they survived the National Socialist era: in concentration camps, in hiding places, in the Nazi children's asylum center "Am Spiegelgrund", in a country they had fled to, as a "half-Jew" in Vienna, as a Carinthian Slovenian. They tell of people who marginalized and persecuted them, but also of people who helped. They relate key experiences and how those experiences shaped them later in life.
  • Materials used:

    Written or other published material, Audiovisual material, Online material
    Link to the material:
    1. http://www.ueber-leben.at
  • Material produced:

    Written material, Audiovisual material
  • Sequence of activities - methodology:

    This learning platform was developed for school use. It is structured in the following way: Clicking on one of the portrait photos takes the user to the next level, which contains two videos and two learning modules for each person as central elements. The videos are based on biographical interviews conducted in 2014/15, lasting two to three hours in full length. For the website they were edited in two ways: 1) A short video portrait introduces the life story of the contemporary witness. 2) The approximately 25-minute interview, a compilation from the original source, then gives the opportunity to delve deeper into the experiences of this contemporary witness / eyewitness.
  • Length of activity:

    Up to 5 hours
  • Is the activity digital?:

    Yes: http://www.ueber-leben.at

    • Accessibility and replicability

  • Language(s) in which activity can be delivered:

    German
  • Is specialist knowledge or professional training required?:

    No

Qualitative Details


  • Has this practice been evaluated?

    Yes
    • How many times?:

    5-10
  • By whom?:

    Participants, Informal non-participant observer, Instructor delivering the practice, Internal evaluator, Formal external evaluator
  • By what means?:

    Informal verbal feedback, During a workshop
  • Core content knowledge and transferable skills:

    - The contemporary witnesses and their stories are at the center. The interviews are not used to illustrate facts, but treated as an independent source. - Therefore, we want to reproduce the interview as faithfully as possible, even if we produce shorter versions for practical reasons. Thus, longer narrative passages are not always smoothed with cuts and leave questions or reactions of the interviewer. - Eyewitness interviews have a special emotional quality. Therefore, they are not suitable for mere consumption, but require an intensive debate. - We not only focus on the content of the narrative, but also on the source itself and its conditions of origin. With students, we reflect questions like: What influences an interview? What role does the interviewer or interview setting play? - We also look at the narrative style and ask why someone tells the story as he / she tells it. - über_leben invites students to engage in longer narratives. The website shows only a few, selected photos of contemporary witnesses, because we do not want to promote a quick "clicking through", but slow, attentive viewing. - Students are encouraged in the learning modules to discover their own questions, to set their own priorities and to take a stand. This approach takes learners seriously as independent thinking, feeling and acting people.
  • Indicators of success:

    über_leben is easily adaptable for various educational settings; it is free; it enables teachers to prepare their students for encounters with survivors
  • Educational coordinator contact details:

    Name: Maria Ecker-Angerer
    Email address: Maria.Ecker@erinnern.at

Scalability

The RETHINK project is concerned with bridging formal and informal education. This section explores the factors that make a practice adaptable.


  • Key factors for successful implementation:

    Other factor – please specify, None
  • Main challenges to teachers adapting this practice for their students:

    There are no big challenges as the website is designed in a very user-friendly way.
  • Availability of guidance/training/replication materials (and in what language/format currently):

    You can find German guidance here: http://www.ueber-leben.at/daten/allgemeine-anregungen
  • Other comments or details:

    None