The Holocaust

                                           THE  HOLOCAUST
Last year I did some MOOCs  by following the  European websites 
http://www.europeanschoolnetacademy.eu/  and  Futurelearn 
https://www.futurelearn.com/.
The first one is  a  European  MOOC platform that provides courses for educators who need to upgrade their  technology skills and aims at improving the  digital skills of teachers.  The second platform is an interesting virtual learning environment where people can learn about  History, Literature, Languages and also Blended Learning. If you check online you will see a lot of interesting courses that are planned for this year. 
I did some interesting course with Futurelearn in autumn  and in winter  and I must say that the course about the Holocaust was really interesting as I learnt more about the events that led to the atrocities of the second world war, but I particularly liked the MOOC on Blended Learning as I could learn more about the way I can work online.
I wanted to use some content and the new tools and so I worked on a teaching unit about the Holocaust.
To prepare my classes for 27 January- when we will remember the liberation of Auschwitz-  I worked online and created some web pages for my students together with some readings and videos to explain what happened in the concentration camps and why.
I tried to use the tools which I have used so far and I also learned how to create my e-book, it is only a leaflet- with the lesson for my students.
Most of what I have presented relies on the great activities of sharing materials which we can now have thanks to internet and also to the new web tools which we can now use and  which are free.   
First of all, here you can find some information about  the tools which I used:
- my  website  which I started in September 2015 where I created it and all the web pages  thanks to Google, just  see the web page online for this activity:
https://sites.google.com/site/englishclassroomprofangiolini/home/history-the-holocaust   
-  youtube videos for presenting the people  who experienced the concentration camps and the holocaust- I selected two people who talked about what they saw
-  http://fliphtml5.com/   a digital platform where I uploaded my unit and embedded it in my web page. I just had to write the unit about the Holocaust using  google doc or  a  word editor by adding the image and the web links for the videos and the resources. The book can be seen online and it can be shared  and printed https://s3.amazonaws.com/online.fliphtml5.com/qdlj/mfuc/index.html#p=8

This is my leaflet online:



- internet research online about more materials about the Holocaust and I must confess that thanks to social media now you can find a lot of documents, videos, photos and presentations. I used Google search engine and , in particular,  Slideshare  http://www.slideshare.net/.

I also embedded some interesting materials in the other web pages:
from Pearltrees where I had collected a lot of web links for my students and for further research:
https://sites.google.com/site/englishclassroomprofangiolini/home/history-the-holocaust/history-of-the-holocaust-italian-links

there is also a second web page with the slides about the Holocaust and WW2 which I embedded from slideshare.net.
- a video presentation created with Zaption  
  https://www.zaption.com/
Here is the link to the activity which I found online- it is about the protagonist Lily who remembers her past :
https://www.zaption.com/listing/54d4ba53be95f0c46b14f0de

Here is my activity online for the course which I had done about Blended Learning with Futurelearn: it was my first idea about how to introduce the Holocaust in class this year.
I have added a poem " Memento "by S.Spender in the unit: it is an interesting poem that reminds us about the importance of remembering what happened.

Created with Padlet

Here is the poem which I have included in the  unit:

The use of padlets in education is very popular now in the UK and also in Europe. I have used padlet  https://padlet.com
 for my learning diaries online and I would like to use this tool with my students. A problem is internet access at school. That's the main reason why I have created the framework for the activities online but only some activities can be carried out online in my school. I will, therefore,ask my students to work also from home and do their activities for the unit at home.  I rely on their work as teaching English only  3 hours a week and having to cope with lots of students who have difficulties in listening and writing  requires a special teacher who thinks about the best ways to  help them.
The videos are from Youtube and can be saved and seen also offline.

The activities I have devised are part of the presentation to the school trip that my 4th and 5th-year classes will make in March and they will visit a concentration camp and learn more about the Holocaust.
My idea is to ask them to write something in English about the visit and to  create a document online where each student can share his or her feelings about what they have learnt.
All the tools I have used are free and they only require internet access and an email for registration. What  I have done can be shared as both the book editor and padlet  have links for the works.