Edcafe reflection

On Wednesday, our class had our Edcafe about WWII.  My group consisted of Eliza, Anson and me.  We lead two discussions back-to-back at the beginning of class.  In the first session, all members of my group facilitated the conversation.  It went well and many people participated.  Eliza started off the conversation by talking about the layoutof the concntration camp and many of the supervisors and people in charge.  Then I talked about different forms of torture that the Nazi's used on their victims.  I talked about a range of torture methods from medical experiments to techniques used in the death/extermination camps.  Then, Anson took over and specifically talked about Aushwitz.

During the second session, Eliza went to participate in another group while Anson and I stayed back to lead our Edcafe.  This session went as well, and Anson and I tried to fill everyone in about Eliza's information/

Overall, Edcafes are a great way for group participation in a class room.  It is important for us to be able to work in a group, and this type of project helps with this. One thing in particular that I enjoy about Edcafes is that we can really learn about whatever we want.  We get to pick our path and investigate about something that we are interested in.

One suggestion that I would make for future Edcafes is that we should only have two groups per session instead of 3 groups all going at once.  This will make the 2 groups bigger.  I think it would be advantageous to do this because I think that more people would make the conversation better.  There would be more people who have information to offer, and the group won't need to rely on one or two people to really dominate the conversation.

Nazi and American Propaganda Videos

Nazi Propaganda was used by Hitler to try and recruit people to come to the war. He was very successful with his propaganda as many Germans praised him and eventually joined the army. The propaganda video depicted that the Germans were always happy and had a positive outlook towards Hitler. They made him look like a hero by always praising him. The Germans treated Hitler like he was god and would do anything that he wanted them to do. In addition, all of the Germans look like they agree with each other and nobody appears to oppose Hitler. The video also showed kids supporting Hitler which shows that everybody is in favor of Hitler. In the video, it also shows that Hitler tried to make kids feel like they are important. He does this so that they can join the war when they get older.

Throughout the whole video, there is no video footage of anything negative about Hitler and the Nazi Party. They only show things that make the Nazi Party look good. They don't show any violence or any other nagative quality that the Nazi's have.

The american propaganda video is different from the Nazi's because it actually shows warfare. The video tries to show the size and power that the US army has.  The US citizens look very patriotic and show a stong sense of nationalism.  In the video, it discusses information about relations between the US and other countries.  This is different from Nazi propaganda as it only talked about Germany. 

It is interesting to see the difference between two different forms of nationalism.  The US took a more direct form of propaganda by simply showing the size and power of the army, while the Nazi's simply showed Hitler and everyone praising him.