Project Proposal
People connect with history when it is presented in a personal and engaging fashion. This is the critical concept that underlies my project proposal. For my semester project, I propose to build a website that will center on the personal narrative of a German immigrant. Henry Sobcek, a distant cousin, grew up in Germany and fought under Hitler during World War II. After the war, he worked for British intelligence and later settled in the United States. His narrative will ideally allow visitors to my site to form a personal connection with an individual, fostering a better understanding of a specific period in history.
My website will be directed at students, specifically towards a middle school aged audience. It is at this point that students are exposed to a curriculum that includes information on World War II and immigration. Ideally, my site will be utilized within one of these broader units. I want the students to take from my site a deeper understanding of these two historical events. I have already interviewed Henry and collected a great deal of oral history. Based on this information, I will conduct further research on the people, places and events that Henry discussed. Although his story will be the focus of my website, it will be used in conjunction with my background research on Germany, World War II and immigration. Any images and maps will come from the internet and will therefore already be digitized.
I plan to organize the information in chronological order by tracing the events of Henry’s life. I will give some brief background information on Henry’s childhood in Poland and Germany. I will then address his military service in the Hitler youth groups and later the Nazi army. Finally, I will discuss his immigration to the United States after the war. At this point, I am tentatively planning on using a blog as my basic web building tool. Each post will represent a different point in Henry’s life and will contain the basic narrative, photographs and maps. It would be easy for students to navigate and contribute to the personal aspect of the site.
The creation of this website has multiple benefits for me, personally and professionally. On a personal level, it is a great opportunity for me to interview Henry and document his story. I have grown up hearing about his life, yet no one in my family has ever written it down. On a professional level, I am interested in working in the area of education after I receive my degree. This website allows me to gather material with an educational purpose, while learning how to interpret the historical information for a younger audience.
March 20th, 2006 at 11:43 pm
Alright, this is going to be a very strange comment.
I can’t stop talking about this book that i’m trying to read (over all the schoolwork) this past week and half. Its called Two Lives by Vikram Seth, within which he offers a narrative of the lives of his uncle and aunt, one an Indian who earned his dentistry degree in 1933-1939 in Germany, and his Aunt who was a German Jew who escaped leaving a mother and sister behind….anyway its interesting b/c Seth incorporates primary documents with his general narration which might be part of the format you’ll be looking for. Though the book is directed to adults, it still may have some sort of relavance to your topic
March 21st, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Your project is fascinating! It sounds like a really great, well-structured way to help middle school students engage with the past. I look forward to seeing your end results.