International Educational Conference Post-conference publication | Page 33

We have to understand one more thing: that when giving a tour on-site, a guide is just

a guide. They go from place to place, but being a guide in this online tool requires not only being a guide but also the operator, cameraman, moderator, so it is very multitasking oriented. It was important that the design was user-friendly and that the guide could operate it with just one touch, so they would not get distracted by using the technology but rather focus on giving the tour. I think we really managed to do this.

 

Wojciech Soczewica: Ran, what does it mean to develop such a platform and apply it to a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau?

 

Ran Diskin: It was really clear from day one that this would require a lot of technology

from different fields of knowledge. The main challenge was to create a platform where we did not feel the technology. Visitors do not need to feel the technology, they need to feel

and experience the tour. For guides, it really needed to be a single click operation. […] So we went back to the basics of simply connecting people through new technologies. Examples

of new technologies that really advanced in the last few years are the video conference tools like Zoom or Teams. This is one platform that we could use. A second example are

the streaming platforms like Youtube or Netflix. The streaming capacity went far beyond anything we could have imagined. The third example are smartphones. The iPhone today takes pictures and videos in the highest possible quality. So, from the technological point

of view, this work was to take all these new technologies and create an immersive experience. There are a lot of aspects to that. We had a lot of debates about how interactive the visitors need to be. We ended up deciding that they should be focused on the guide, but still should get tools to interact and ask questions, like a discussion mode. And, for the guides, focus

on guiding and not just using the app. There is a lot of infrastructure that comes with it. We are cooperating with the Internet company Orange to make Wi-Fi available everywhere here, so that it would be of the highest quality. […] A few months ago, we started testing the app, beginning with us […] to sharpen the technology, the guiding, the content, everything.

The final important thing is that we created a very adaptable system from which we can manage the tours, but also create new tools and experiences. […] The future is about telling more stories and this system

allows us to create that. 

 

Wojciech Soczewica: Zuzanna, how was it for you to take the content from the exhibitions

and share it online?

 

Zuzanna Janusik: Of course it started from the points of interest, and we very quickly realized that it pretty much covers what the visitors see during their tour at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. But, it required building a new exhibition for this special tool because we couldn’t utilize the current exhibition due to the number of visitors, as Tomasz has said. As it is only 1.5 hours, it had to be very carefully chosen to also provide a lot of information

to the visitors, especially the art works of Auschwitz survivors through their eyes

and experiences. We started with very detailed research within our collections department and photographs from our archives, but we realized that there are many other institutions with large collections and important photographs that can provide us with information

to help in building this exhibition. We quickly created a list of items we needed, and it turned out that we had a lot of institutions to cooperate with to get the copyrights of photographs and testimonies, for example. Thanks to the app, visitors can access original blocks that are not usually opened to visitors. Even visitors who have already been here can learn something new.

Wojciech Soczewica: To all of us, it was very important to demonstrate this to some survivors and to hear very positive feedback. Liron, perhaps you would like to talk about the role

of survivors and their first reactions?