Aaron Peterer works as an educator at the Anne Frank House. He first joined this institution as a volunteer in 2002 as part of his Austrian civic service for one year and has been with them ever since. He coordinates many projects around their traveling Anne Frank exhibitions entitled “Anne Frank - A History for Today” or “Anne Frank - Let Me Be Myself.” He also leads film workshops on monuments and memorialization while, more recently, is responsible for online virtual tours.
Since the early 2000s, the museum has brought their exhibitions into schools and has trained students to become peer guides for the Anne Frank exhibitions. For two days, students learn about Anne Frank’s life, the context in which she lived, and why her story
is still relevant today. They take ownership of the exhibition by setting it up themselves, and, ultimately, the students have to guide their peers through the exhibition. Students engage in real conversations with their classmates about the topic of the exhibition
and beyond, such as discrimination, for example. In February 2020, Aaron Peterer did his last pre-pandemic peer guide training in Oregon, USA. As the lockdown continued,
he wanted to keep doing his educational work for his students from his home
in Amsterdam. In March of the same year, he experienced his first Zoom meeting and found it to be a great tool for keeping in touch with his students, but was looking for a way
to keep his students actively engaged. Using the PDFs of the exhibitions wasn’t efficient enough. He rediscovered an existing tool of the museum: Anne Frank Online, and decided to guide his students through the museum online via Zoom. Since then, they have adapted this tool to the needs of the tour guides and educators from their museum. Originally,
the online tour was created to provide educational material to teachers who wanted
to present the museum to their students, or for students to prepare some schoolwork, etc. That is why the public online version is different and provides more information.
Aaron Peterer, photo: Press Office