At USC Shoah Foundation’s international conference this November, Aya Yadlin-Segal will present her research on a topic that is well-known to anyone who reads online news articles: user comments. Her presentation will look at how online comments in Israel are a platform of collective memory of the Holocaust.Yadlin-Segal is working toward her PhD in communication at Texas A&M University. At the University of Haifa, her master’s thesis was about the representation of Jewish immigrants and immigration in 1950s Israeli children’s magazines.

After learning about IWitness for the first time, social studies teacher Jane C. Moore was inspired to begin using it in her class this year and she even introduced the program to an enthusiastic group of teachers at a professional development seminar this summer.Moore teaches sixth grade social studies at East Cobb Middle School in Marietta, Ga. Now in her 21st year of teaching, she said she loves when she finds “really interesting, practical, and relevant ways to teach, like using IWitness.”

Szilvia Szunyogh was so moved by the recent Teaching with Testimony in the 21st Century program in Hungary that she created a heartfelt painting about the experience.

When Kim Simon began working at the Shoah Foundation to help coordinate efforts to collect testimonies in 1994, she understood that the voices of those who lived through some of history’s darkest times needed to be heard by as many people as possible.“Survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides and crimes against humanity have an irreplaceable perspective to add to our understanding of the world and its conflicts, wherever they occur,” Simon explained.

For USC Shoah Foundation’s education department, led by director Kori Street, PhD, being involved in the Auschwitz: The Past is Present program is a historic opportunity to demonstrate USC Shoah Foundation’s commitment to sharing and teaching survivors’ stories.USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with Discovery Communications on the education component of Auschwitz: The Past is Present, a global communications and education program that will support the official observance of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 2015.

Through his work with the University of London Institute of Education’s Centre for Holocaust Education, Tony Cole teaches “hard to reach” students, who have social, emotional, behavioral or physical needs. But while these students face significant learning challenges, Cole has found IWitness to be an effective and powerful tool to teach them about the Holocaust.

Jared McBride, the first-ever Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellow at the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, says testimony isn’t just an important aspect of his upcoming book manuscript. It can help prove that the controversial history he studies even happened.

Since Barbara Jaffe first learned about the USC Shoah Foundation 10 years ago, she has participated in its Master Teacher professional development program, created her own IWitness activities, and has seen her students become just as affected by Holocaust survivor testimony as she is.

USC Shoah Foundation’s Memory, Media and Technology: Exploring the Trajectories of Schindler’s List conference will welcome not just genocide, Holocaust and history scholars, but also experts in media and film. As panel moderator, Johanna Blakley is looking forward to the conference’s discussions of technology and digital communication.