Facing History and Ourselves and
the Pearson Foundation
Using Digital Arts to Create Informed, Socially Engaged Students
“Digital storytelling works really well for Facing History. Students transform and they become the storytellers, history now becomes theirs because they are now telling the story. Because of the technology their voices can be heard around the world. You’re going to hear my students’ passion, you’re going to hear and see the stories they have created and that is the piece that digital storytelling brings in.” – Gillian Smith, Principal, Facing History School, New York City
Facing History and Ourselves, a partner in the Digital Arts Alliance, has joined with the Pearson Foundation in an innovative digital arts initiative. This partnership has added digital storytelling to Facing History’s unique curriculum, which focuses not only on investigating history, but also on helping students develop their own voice in the present. During the past year, digital arts teams from the Pearson Foundation have conducted classroom residencies in high schools in Boston and New York, along with professional development workshops for Facing History teachers.
Facing History and Ourselves is an international non-profit organization that engages middle and high school teachers and their students in an examination of racism, prejudice, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust through a study of history and its bearing on the problems of today. Digital storytelling skills are a natural fit with the work of Facing History, giving students the tools to express themselves and move from being media consumers to media producers as they publish their work online. This alliance is working to bring 21st century literacy to students as part of a larger goal – building an informed, humane citizenry.
As part of this initiative, the Pearson Foundation contributed mobile computer labs to seven schools that use the Facing History curriculum in Boston and New York City.
What is Facing History and Ourselves? Learn more about this unique educational organization.
Professional Development for Facing History Teachers
In the summer and fall of 2007, the Pearson Foundation, working with Facing History staff, provided digital arts professional development workshops to faculty and administrators in Boston and New York City schools. The workshops demonstrated, in step-by-step lessons, how to integrate the Facing History curriculum in digital storytelling projects.
Learn about Pearson’s professional development workshops for Facing History teachers.
Digital Storytelling Classroom Residencies
The Pearson Foundation, in its ongoing partnership with Facing History, provides digital storytelling residencies to schools in Boston and New York. These intensive, classroom-based workshops teach students to write, organize, shoot, assemble and edit their own curriculum-based digital films.
Learn more about digital storytelling classroom residencies and the stories produced by New York and Boston area students in Facing History classes.
The Digital Legacies Project
In the summer of 2007, Facing History held a groundbreaking four-week program: The Digital Legacies Project. In this project, a select group of students from the Boston area schools investigated the lives of four pioneers of the civil rights movement. With the help of a team from the Pearson Foundation, the students created digital films retelling those stories. Those films have become part of the Boston Public Schools curriculum.
Learn more about the Digital Legacies Project four-week internship program and the remarkable projects produced by student participants.