WorldView at the Summer School on Teaching the Armenian Genocide

On July 23, the Visual Armenia team had the opportunity to present the WorldView educational platform at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, focusing on its capacity to support the teaching of the Armenian Genocide for history educators.

The two-day summer school, titled “Teaching the Armenian Genocide,” featured Haykanush Gevondyan—WorldView program expert and lead for alignment with state education standards—who introduced the platform’s latest tools and pedagogical potential. Her presentation centered on how WorldView can help structure an effective and engaging learning process around one of the most complex topics in Armenian and world history.

The summer school brought together nearly thirty history teachers, many of whom were already familiar with the WorldView platform and expressed strong interest in enhancing the effectiveness of Armenian Genocide education (AGE) in their classrooms.

Gevondyan demonstrated the use of WorldView’s “Talking Map” method—an interactive educational approach through which students not only study a map but also “listen” to its stories by exploring embedded academic content and historical narratives. She also explored the value of interdisciplinary connections, illustrating how literature and the arts can serve both as guardians of memory and as powerful testimony to the reality of genocide.

One compelling example focused on mapping the journey of Aurora Mardiganian, a survivor and witness of the Armenian Genocide. This case illustrated how biography, testimony, and geography can be woven together to form a powerful teaching model grounded in lived experience and historical evidence.

Gevondyan also emphasized how the WorldView platform enables students to study the long-term consequences of cultural genocide. Through digital mapping, they can trace altered place names, destroyed churches, and preserved relics.

Despite the day’s demanding schedule and summer heat, the participants remained highly engaged throughout the session. They explored the platform’s features in detail, posed thoughtful questions, and actively discussed strategies for applying modern teaching methods in their classrooms. When asked whether the proposed approaches to genocide education were realistic and applicable, the teachers unanimously agreed. They emphasized that WorldView offers all the necessary tools to deliver high-quality, standards-based instruction aligned with Armenia’s competency-based education reforms.