January/February 2004
Vol. 36, no. 1
ISSN 1492-4676

The Future of Broadband Relives the Past

Trevor Clayton, Communications

At W.O. Mitchell Elementary School in Kanata, Ontario, on November 25, a group of roughly 20 students sat before a large projection screen pulled down over the blackboard. On the screen were images of three classrooms: one from Ulluriaq in Kangiqsualujjuaq, northern Quebec; another from Holy Heart in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador; and the one in which they were sitting. It was a demonstration of the latest digital learning tool in the public school system, the Broadband Book Club.

The multi-purpose system allows for two-way interaction (streamlined video and audio) for enhanced engagement between those sending and those receiving information. The term ‘Broadband’ (as opposed to a narrowband) refers to a data communications system that handles high volumes of data.

For the elementary school sessions, Broadband works as a tool to promote reading, encouraging elementary and public school students across Canada to study a chosen book in preparation to discuss their ideas online, in real time—in this particular instance, across three provinces and two time zones. The innovative technology proved capable of stirring excitement in the young students who might otherwise have linked electronics to pastimes other than reading.

Yet what the students found just as striking about the Broadband demonstration was the subject of the book itself: a suitcase. The Book Club provided a forum for the children to discuss one of the darkest moments in our history, symbolized by a suitcase that belonged to a young Jewish girl who was murdered by the Nazis in an Auschwitz gas chamber in 1944.

Written by Karen Levine, a radio producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Hana’s Suitcase tells the emotional and extraordinary true story of Hana Brady, who was 11 years old when she was deported from her home in Czechoslovakia. A common fate for millions, what was unusual about Hana was the resurrection of her memory. Fumiko Ishioka, curator of the Tokyo Holocaust Education Center, spent a year unravelling the mystery of Hana Brady after receiving from the Auschwitz museum the suitcase bearing the young girl’s name. Hana's Suitcase, like the initial radio documentary, is based on Fumiko Ishioka’s quest for answers.

Author Karen Levine and Holocaust survivor David Shentow were both present at the Kanata elementary school during the Broadband Book Club to answer questions and encourage the students in each class to imagine themselves in the predicaments of Hana and her surviving brother George (now 75 and living in Toronto with his family). Each class drew pictures of belongings they would pack in a suitcase if they were forced from their homes and families. Some read compassionate poems they had written for Hana; others performed skits depicting Hana and George’s lives in the concentration camp. The class from Ulluriaq created a spectacular panoramic mural, a wonderful example of visual storytelling that illustrated the Bradys’ idyllic life in Nove Mesto, Czechoslovakia, and the upheaval that followed.

The projects exhibited throughout the day were seen and heard by all three schools, and each presentation was given full attention by every student. It was evident that the Broadband Book Club provided an effective means of engaging students with their peers and establishing a tolerant and creative learning atmosphere.

"Broadband will be used for students of all ages, from kindergarten to lifelong learning," said Broadband leader Martin Brooks, of the National Research Council (NRC), adding that the visual communication system is not limited to literacy. "We are using the same tools and pedagogical techniques for music education, global affairs, and science."

John Spence, program manager for the Communications Research Centre, alternately described the merits of Broadband as being useful to "almost any type of activity where connecting people to people around rich media content enhances their ability to build knowledge and/or skills together."

Both men were present at the demonstration, which also featured a display of concentration camp artefacts exhibited and explained by Josiane Polidori, of Library and Archives Canada’s Children’s Literature Services.

The students were transfixed as they listened to David Shentow. Now 78, Mr. Shentow was a Jewish prisoner in Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, Warsaw and Dachau. He grew up in Belgium and was 17 when first sent to Auschwitz, in 1942.

Asked about his experience in the camps, such as forced labour and a particularly intelligent question about the Jewish community and whether there was a fellowship among the imprisoned Jews (there wasn’t), Mr. Shentow answered patiently and spoke very gently on the importance of remembrance and his incredulity at being alive to tell about his experience in the war.

"It was Hell. That is the only word to describe it," he said frankly. "The worst moment was after the war, when I learned that I was the only member of my family to survive."

After being rifle-butted in the back of the head by a retreating German soldier in Dachau, Shentow was left to die in a ditch at war’s end. Exhausted and rail-thin from starvation, he remembers waking up and pulling back his pants to weep at the sight of his emaciated legs. After struggling to Dachau’s main gate, Shentow survived on grass, leaves and rats before the Americans liberated the camp on April 29, 1945 (also Mr. Shentow’s birthday). He immigrated to Canada in 1949. His visit to W.O. Mitchell E.S. was the second Broadband session Mr. Shentow participated in, the first occurring last May.

Based on the success of the first two Broadband Book Club sessions, plans are in the works to coordinate another session, possibly as early as next spring. Further information on the Broadband Book Club can be found at www.nlc-bnc.ca/1/1/n1-373-e.html and www.nlc-bnc.ca/forum/n7-3600-e.html.