Pare Lorentz Center Offers Free Access to Multimedia History Instruction Resources

    HYDE PARK, NY, November 05, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- History and Social Studies educators now have free online access to a comprehensive, multimedia collection of teaching resources from the Pare Lorentz Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. The collection, available at http://PareLorentzCenter.org., was established to provide teachers, students and the general public an enhanced understanding of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the life and times of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

The major elements of the Pare Lorentz Center's resource collection include an interactive timeline, distance learning opportunities, video curriculum guides, and a film library containing Lorentz's body of works and other historical footage. Filmmaker Pare Lorentz created groundbreaking documentaries for the New Deal agencies of the Roosevelt Administration, shedding light on environmental and social problems in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Lorentz Center brings to life emergent themes and pivotal moments in American history, including:
- The Great Depression
- The New Deal Programs
- Social Security
- Conservation of Natural Resources
- The Presidency and the Supreme Court
- World War II
- The Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor
- Japanese-American Internment
- The Tuskegee Airmen
- The Creation of the United Nations
- The Legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt

"Lorentz believed that film holds enormous potential for advancing social justice and education," said Jeffrey Urbin, Education Specialist. "His work introduces a new way to visually present history to students."

Highlights of the Pare Lorentz Center's resource collection include the FDR: Day by Day Online Internet educational timeline. This interactive calendar, first envisioned by Lorentz, provides a multimedia FDR chronology. Historical appointment calendars, documents, photos, audio and film are catalogued by date, so users can scroll through a time line or keyword search to find out what was happening on any day during FDR's years in office. The collection consolidated FDR's daily diaries and calendars, which were maintained in scattered sources by his various secretaries and the White House Usher's Office.

Another part of the collection is a series of Video Curriculum Guides. Lorentz's own films and other public domain archival footage have been edited into short film segments. These 6-10 minute clips enhance understanding of archival documents, study questions, and other online teacher resources from the FDR Library.

Full-length motion pictures, documentaries, and other original multimedia projects are also part of the collection, housed on the FDR Presidential Library and Museum channel on YouTube.com. This extensive library of FDR footage and related historical material is maintained by the Pare Lorentz Center. The works have been formatted into web-friendly video.

The distance learning component of the collection, "Expanding the Reach of the Roosevelts," facilitates video conferencing between the Pare Lorentz Center and classrooms anywhere in the world. Programs can be customized to supplement any curriculum, while specific programs already developed include workshops to raise student performance in Social Studies, specialized film-based workshops, and professional development seminars for teachers on the use of film in the classroom.

Pare Lorentz (1905-1992) provided inspiration to generations of documentary film makers. His most noted works include The Plow That Broke the Plains, about the devastation following the Dust Bowl, and The River, which celebrated the Mississippi River as a major corridor for commerce. The script, printed in book form, earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination for poetry in 1936.

Based in Hyde Park, NY, the Pare Lorentz Center is housed at The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Founded in 1993 by Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer Lorentz, the center's mission is to apply the audiovisual techniques pioneered by Pare Lorentz to teach history and social studies, and to perpetuate Lorentz's use of the documentary format in inspiring social and political messages. The center is funded through a generous grant from the New York Community Trust to the Roosevelt Institute.

For more information, visit http://PareLorentzCenter.org. Educators may contact Education Specialist Jeffrey Urbin directly at [email protected] or 845.486.7761.

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