180 Terabytes of Visual History: Incorporating Survivors of the Shoah Archives into the Curriculum

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180 Terabytes of Visual History Incorporating
Survivors of the Shoah Archives into the
Curriculum

• Charles Henry
• Andrea Martin
• Diane Butler
• http//shoah.rice.edu

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Shoah Visual History Foundation

• Established in 1994 by Steven Spielberg to
  collect the testimonies of survivors and other
  eyewitnesses to the Holocaust
• Mission statement
• To overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry -
  and the suffering they cause - through the
  educational use of the Foundations visual
  history testimonies.
• http//www.vhf.org

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The Shoah Archive

• 52,000 testimonies from Jewish survivors,
  Jehovahs Witnesses, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals,
  political prisoners, rescuers, and liberators of
  concentration camps
• 32 languages including English, Russian, Hebrew,
  French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian
• 1-18 hours in length, average 2.5 hours
• 117,000 hours of video

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Technology

• 180 terabyte archive located at the Shoah
  Foundation
• Robot to load the tapes
• Requires Internet 2 connection
• Requires 1 terabyte of local cache

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System Architecture
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Mellon Grant - Participating Schools(Rice, USC,
Yale)
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The Rice Research Team

• Charles Henry - Vice Provost University
  Librarian
• Geneva Henry - Executive Director, Digital
  Library Initiative
• Lisa Spiro - Director, Electronic Resources
  Center, ETRAC
• Andrea Martin - Director, Enterprise Systems
  Applications
• Diane Butler - Manager, Enterprise Systems
  Applications
• Chris Pound - Faculty Support, Educational
  Technology
• Janice Bordeaux - Research Scientist/Licensed
  Psychologist, George R. Brown School of
  Engineering
• Jeff Koffler - Faculty Support, Enterprise
  Systems Applications
• Paul Cruz - Graduate Student, Department of
  Psychology

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Research Agenda

• Technology Platform
• Does the technology work?
• What investment needs to be made in hardware,
  software, and staff support?
• Integration of Resources
• What does it take to integrate into existing
  curriculum?

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Research Agenda

• Usability
• How will faculty manage instructional strategies
  with digital video?
• Instructional Toolkit
• What tools need to be offered to faculty and
  students in order to ensure integration and
  usability?

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Research Agenda

• Intellectual Property
• What impact are privacy and security concerns
  likely to have on the way in which these
  interviews are used in college classrooms?
• Impact on Support
• What structures need to be in place to maximize
  the impact of these materials on teaching and
  learning?
• These materials rely on technology to be
  effective in classrooms and offices, how will it
  be managed?

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Research Agenda

• Impact on Pedagogy
• To what extent, does the use of digital video
  alter teaching strategies and class assignments?
• How does the deeply emotional and sensitive
  nature of this collection affect student
  learning?
• What kinds of intellectual problems can be
  addressed using the testimonies in the archive
  that could not be addressed with other kinds of
  materials?

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Assessment

• Faculty interviews
• Pedagogic vision
• Use of the archive
• Student Survey
• Satisfaction with quality and challenge of Shoah
  coursework
• Emotional engagement and impact on students
• Intellectual engagement and impact on learning
• Satisfaction with archive technology support and
  expertise

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Fall 03 Courses

• Anthropology 328 - Violence, Terror, and Social
  Trauma student project
• German 125 Between Resistance and Collaboration
  3 student projects
• Religious Studies 209 Introduction to Judaism
  mandatory group projects

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Spring 04 Courses

• Anth 321 - Classical Studies 311 Text as
  Property full class case study on intellectual
  property
• Anth 327 Gender and Symbolism student project
  (Anth perspectives on rape)
• Anth 419 Law and Society student project
• Anth 412/612 Rhetoric class, conference
  papers at AAA
• History 254 Culture and Society Post-1945
  Germany student project
• German 329 Literature of the Holocaust Exile
• Visual Arts 327 Documentary Production 2
  student projects

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Anthropology 328 - Violence, Terror, and Social
Trauma

• Julie Taylor, Ph.D.
• Addressing the central place of violence in our
  society and its relations with social and
  political terror in other cultures
• 16 students advanced undergraduates in
  anthropology and humanities
• Goal Teach students to recognize cultural
  models that explain and justify violence.

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Anthropology 328

• Used by one student to study the effects of
  survivors religiosity
• did they become more or less religious after the
  war?
• The Shoah archive was a wonderful way to move
  beyond statistics and into the individual
  experiences of the people involved in the
  Holocaust.

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German 125 - Between Resistance and Collaboration

• Maria-Regina Kecht, Ph.D.
• Focus on individuals behavior in Nazi
  Germany/Austria.
• 13 students freshman seminar
• Goals Examine a wide spectrum of participant
  roles victims, rescuers, collaborators, and
  perpetrators. Students will learn from the
  choices of others and strengthen their personal
  resolve to help others regardless of the common
  opinion.

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German 125

• Used by 3 student projects as a source for
  multimedia projects
• Month by month timeline for Progressive
  Intensification of Nazi Racial Policy
• Medical Experiments in Nazi Germany
• Kindertransport, 1938-1939
• Reactions Surprise among students regarding
  details of everyday life such as how the Shoah
  affected routine cultural production, disrupting
  lives of popular artists, actors, and musicians.

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Religious Studies 209 - Introduction to Judaism

• Gregory Kaplan, Ph.D.
• Survey course on all aspects of the Jewish
  religion
• 15 students undergraduates
• Goals Support lectures on Jewish life in Europe
  and assign students to view video and group
  presentations on how the Shoah affected a
  survivors Jewish identity.

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Religious Studies 209

• Survey results
• Interest in the archive appears very strong
• Students exceptionally satisfied with
  intellectual quality and challenge of
  archive-based coursework
• Group presentations required 1.5 hours of
  individual browsing, 2 hours of work on the
  assignment per student.
• Work had a strong emotional impact on most
  students. After first clip, room was completely
  still and silent.

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Project Results So Far

• Support for faculty and students
• Laptops for faculty
• Campus computers configured to ensure the video
  plays
• Train staff in the use of the archive for
  multimedia projects
• Make sure the technology doesnt get in the way
  of using the archive

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Technology Challenges

• Work in Progress
• Not all videos are digitized
• Searching is based on their keywords
• Windows vs Mac
• Business vs 24x7 academia
• Scalability Issues
• Tape robot
• Local cache holds 300 testimonies

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Changing the Values of a Generation

• Religious Studies 209 Students
• I was touched by the deeply emotional nature of
  the testimonies
• The more I saw, the more I felt like I know the
  people, and I became emotionally attached. I
  laughed with them and cried with them.
• They made me sad, angry, happy, and amazed by
  peoples strength all at the same time
• More realness to the Holocaust. Not just seen
  as a historical event or movie. Brought to life