History is taught with the hopes that educated people will not repeat the mistakes made by their predecessors. In this digital age, it is often difficult for students to make connections with events that they haven’t experienced. The USC Shoah Foundation, partnering with Discovery Education, aims to bridge these gaps by providing educators and students with access to IWitness, which features nearly 1,500 testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. Additionally, there is a bank of standards-based activities for teachers to use in their classrooms.

To provide further inspiration, there is an IWitness Video Challenge, which hopes to spark student interest. Students from all over North America are invited to listen to the voices in IWitness, use their innovation to create positive value in their communities, and to submit short videos explaining the inspiration behind their extraordinary actions and impact. The standards-based IWitness Video Challenge activity will provide teacher and student guidance from start to finish. Students will be instructed on how to use the video editor built into IWitness to construct, edit, and submit their one-to-four-minute video projects.

IWitness Video Challenge winners from 2015 and 2014 are online for students and teachers to view as exemplars.

The Ford Motor Co. will award more than $10,000 in prizes to students, teachers, and schools who submit winning video essays about their experience.

For STUDENTS:

• First prize = $5,000 scholarship


• Second prize = $1,000 scholarship


• Third prize = $500 scholarship


For TEACHERS:

• $1,000 Grant


For SCHOOL:

• $2,500 Grant


The IWitness Video Challenge is an opportunity for students to learn from the voices of the past while inspiring the voices of the future. We would love to hear how IWitness has inspired your students!