Podcasts and history: Only a piece of the puzzle

Lindsey and I explored ItunesU for resources to teach the Holocaust to our students. It had several things to offer, but we finally settled on the first-person narration of the horrors that occured in the camps. While we think it is interesting and powerful to listen to, its not entirely interactive. There are ways to combine these podcasts and other similar resources to teach the unit to secondary students.


One incorrect, yet established belief is that the murder of over six million jews during WWII never occurred.There are different motivations as to why this belief exists, but as teachers we can use this for a lesson on the Holocaust. I found a website on this subject called the Holocaust Denial On Trial (http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/en/). This website hosts a multitude of content that refutes these claims, including arguments and counter arguments from noted Holocaust deniers.

One way of using this resource as a lesson is to have the students put denial claims on trial for themselves. As we plan the lesson, we can create obstacles for the students to overcome, such as giving them arguments and evidence from Holocaust deniers. This website (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/denial1.html) has a list of many different questions (with answers) that we can pose to the students. It will be up to them to use the HDOT website to find evidence and make their case that the Holocaust did exist. Another possible obstacle would be that they must present a wide variety of evidence, such as court documents, photos, podcasts, videos, or anything else they can find. The students will have to create a document that includes all of their arguments and presentation of their evidence.

I think this is one way of having students actively investigate the truth vs myth in history. They will learn a lot in the process because their is so much media that exists on this subject.

~MjG