Specific Lesson Ideas

Aims, including:
· To expose students to a wealth of content about the topic area
· To improve students' various reading and other receptive skills
· To develop students' various online research skills
· To develop students' critical and analytical skills in approaching these and other sites
· To encourage students' creativity and productive skills including those related to the writing process

Possible Activities
N.B. Unless doing a very wide Web survey, it may be best to have students work across 3-5 sites maximum for any one project. You can compile on a diskette or burn onto a CD the group of sites which you want your students to have access to; this will save them time surfing and going off on tangents.

· Categorise site 'types' (general information/personal page/hate and denial/etc.)
· Overview and compare the contents of a number of sites; topic areas treated, etc and analysis of why these were chosen, prioritisation etc
· Overview and compare the interactive and other features of a number of sites
· Overview and compare the general graphic interface of a number of sites and their effects (emotional and other) on the user
· Analyse the (emotional and other) effects of different graphic styles on sites
· Take a topic and review its treatment on a number of specified sites
· Jigsaw readings by groups of pieces of one site/one topic/various topics
· Collate information about set areas of study eg "Perpetrators, Bystanders, Victims and Heros" or "Child, Adult and Elderly Victims", "Non-Jewish Victims" etc.
· List the questions about the Holocaust that are answered by a particular section or site
· List the questions that a section or site leaves unanswered
· Use survivor testimonies as stimulus materials for interviews, dialogues, even invitations to speak at their school
· Edit/Collect a set of survivor testimonies to represent an overview or specific aspect of the Holocaust experience. Explain choices
· Use graphics as the basis of role play activities or contextualised speaking or writing tasks
· Create timelines, maps or other visual representations of material presented as text
· Compile own Holocaust glossary
· Compile own list(s) of non-computer-based resources: literature, films and videos, etc.
· Discuss the effect of mass media technology on our knowledge and perceptions of the Holocaust today, and/or compare this to the public response to those events at the time, given the absence of these technologies

Excerpts from a professional development seminar given by Lynda Ben-Menashe M.Ed., 1999