This week I was working on my presentation about “Holocaust Education and idea of reflecting on identity”.
I did a panel on May 5th, at the annual conference organized by the Western Jewish Association. The conference took place in Phoenix, Arizona. Some attendees were participating in person. It was actually a nice group of people and the questions afterwards underlined the deep interest in my work. It was very nice to take part and present my research in such a well organized event.
Also, some more articles of mine were published, you can see one example here https://brockhaus.de/ecs/julex/article/troja?isSearchResult=true I wrote a text about the Roman emperor Vespasian, too. His son Titus was in charge for the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the city of Jerusalem. You can find more about in my article here https://brockhaus.de/ecs/julex/article/juedischer-krieg?isSearchResult=true
I had a very interesting conversation with a German teacher this week, who told me that in his school the usage of cell phones is prohibited. So, all teaching material, based on digital sources is unusable for the kids at his school. The problem is, that the publishers for textbooks and resources always force us authors and editors to incorporate as much digital tools and extras as possible. But if school kids cannot use a QR code because they are not allowed to use the cell phone in school, how to use the material at all? I found his statement very characteristic for the entire school system in Germany. Education ministries and school book publishers believe that the future is digital. But in schools the reality is totally different. The legal background on this is the federal structure of the German system. There is no ban on cell phones in every school or every province like in France or Italy for example. Each and every school decides on its own in Germany. So, we simply do not know how many schools allow the usage of cell phones and therefore can use the material and resources I developed and how many do not. We also do not know in how many schools the internet works properly or how many laptops or notebooks are used. We know that only 15% of all schools in Germany do have technical equipment for all classes (https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1298496/umfrage/umfrage-zu-tablets-und-smartphones-in-schulen/). Certainly, this number does not tell us anything about the usage. Due to all the facts, I will try to convince my customers to use less digital stuff, for obvious reasons, and let me write more explanatory texts teachers can simply print or copy.
Besides this I made progress in finding a publisher for my study, three publishing houses are interested in working with me. Pretty good outcome, since I just asked these three😊. I also found someone who will help me to develop a printable template. Certainly, I need to get a funding to cover these costs, but I m confident it will work out.
Sunday evening Yom HaShoa started in Israel - the national Holocaust Remembrance Day. I will give some impressions and more information in my next post.