#42 Exploring WWII History in Real Time with Maddie Roach

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, hosts Seth Fleischauer, Allyson Mitchell, and Tami Moehring welcome Maddie Roach, the Distance Learning Specialist at the National World War II Museum. Maddie shares her experiences building engaging virtual programs that connect learners to history in unique ways, discusses how the museum adapted post-Katrina, and explores how distance learning makes education accessible across the globe.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Maddie's journey from museum volunteer to distance learning specialist.
• The development of digital exhibits and synchronous virtual field trips.
• Operation Foot Locker, a program that ships World War II artifacts to classrooms.
• The museum’s mission to preserve history and teach lessons of tolerance.
• Golden moments when students connect personally with history, including stories from underrepresented groups.
• The importance of balancing synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences.

In-depth insights for educators:
Maddie explains how distance learning bridges physical gaps and brings the museum to students worldwide. She discusses how their programs meet the needs of diverse audiences, from K-12 classrooms to lifelong learners, and shares strategies to create meaningful connections through primary sources and oral histories.

Call to Action:
Tune in to this episode to discover how Maddie and her team use technology to make history come alive. Learn how virtual programs like Operation Foot Locker and interactive webinars are transforming history education. Check the show notes for links to the National World War II Museum’s virtual offerings and explore how to bring these experiences into your classroom.

About today’s guest:
Maddie Roach is the Distance Learning Specialist at the National World War II Museum. With a background in history and public history from the University of New Orleans, Maddie blends her love of technology and education to develop engaging, meaningful virtual programs for learners around the world.

See the museum's promo video, featuring Maddie and mentioned in the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QBMSd7fLxs

Host Links:

1. Discover more virtual learning opportunities at CILC.org with Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell.
2. Seth Fleischauer’s Banyan Global Learning has performed over 40k live virtual teaching periods while improving students' language, digital, and cultural competencies.

Creators & Guests

Host

Allyson Mitchell

SF

Host

Seth Fleischauer

TM

Host

Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

The Why Distance Learning? Podcast explores the transformative power of live virtual learning and its role in shaping the future of education. Hosted by three seasoned distance learning experts, this podcast delivers insights, promising practices, and inspiration for educators, content providers, and education leaders integrating live virtual experiences into teaching and learning. Each episode features interviews with content creators, industry professionals, field experts, and innovative educators who are driving engagement, equity, and innovation through distance learning. By challenging common perceptions and uncovering the realities of live virtual education, Why Distance Learning highlights its true impact and explores how it continues to evolve in an ever-changing educational landscape.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.824)
Hello everyone and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for educators who are engaged with live virtual learning experiences, whether they be content providers who produce and facilitate or educators who want to complement their curriculum and learn more about the medium. We interview content providers, industry professionals, field experts, and educators who love and use live virtual learning. And this week, our guest is Maddie Roach. Maddie, welcome to the program.

Allyson (00:23.304)
Hey.

Maddie (00:26.083)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Seth Fleischauer (00:28.566)
We are excited to have you in that little explanation there. Content providers, that is one of the major category of guests that we have on. You are at the National World War II Museum. You have deep expertise here and we want to dive into what your programs are at the World War II Museum and what makes them work. But before we get to that, Tammy, could you please introduce our guest?

Allyson (00:31.988)
you

Tami Moehring (00:51.37)
I'd be happy to. Maddie Roach is the distance learning specialist at the National World War II Museum. She has been at the museum in this role for over three years now, but got her start and love for museums as a high schooler volunteering with the World War II Museum's youth volunteer program, Victory Corps. As the distance learning specialist, Maddie maintains and presents all the museum's K -12 online programming, including virtual field trips, webinars, and other short form video content.

Along with these programs, she manages Operation Foot Locker, which offers teachers the opportunity to have World War II artifacts shipped directly to their classrooms. Meddy received both her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of New Orleans in history and public history, where she took a class on digital history that she credits with finding her love for all things distance learning and why she pursued the career she has today.

Seth Fleischauer (01:51.63)
Well, I want to dive into that. What's a class on digital history and how did it promote your love of all things distance learning?

Allyson (01:58.715)
Yay!

Maddie (01:59.805)
Yeah, a fun thing about that and like the University of New Orleans and actually the World War II Museum is kind of why the World War II Museum originally kind of was the idea was birthed guess at the University of New Orleans. Stephen Ambrose who started the museum, taught, was a professor at UNO and started like a whole online like not online at the time they were on tapes.

Allyson (02:25.768)
Yes, correspondence courses.

Seth Fleischauer (02:25.902)
You

Maddie (02:29.647)
interviewing World War II veterans and that kind of is why the museum started. But because of that UNO developed a whole like

digital history center, like post Ambrose's passing. So there's a entire, it's like a computer lab, but it's the center that history students have as a digital resource. So Adobe Suite, Omeka, DaVinci Resolve, there's an entire class at UNO that's just about incorporating history into a digital kind of sense.

Allyson (02:55.934)
amazing.

Maddie (03:08.971)
I'd say like that and then also like I was a big like YouTube child watching like people remix like music to be about historical figures is what like got me into like kind of the two things together like digital history kind of like bringing them together but it was a class where

Seth Fleischauer (03:10.243)
you

Allyson (03:15.38)
You

Maddie (03:30.553)
We literally just learned about all these different resources that are online and how you could take history and build it into. A lot of it was creating digital exhibits.

through Omeka or I've already forgotten what the other one was that we use. But we like went through and like would create digital exhibits. We went out into like the community and recorded oral histories. And yeah, that kind of is where I was like, yeah, this seems like it'd be a great like way to like get into museums and incorporate like two things that I enjoy doing, which was like,

being online, perpetually online, content creating, then museums and history. So it just kind of made sense. And then this job opened right when I was graduating. And I was like, wow, that's literally perfect for me. then I went out.

Allyson (04:25.342)
Yes, the universe has brought it all to you, especially I have had the privilege of meeting you in person multiple times and getting to know you more, but I never knew about the pre -recording, like you recording different histories in your classes prior to this job. How awesome for you to be able to get that little taste and then know all of the skill, will gain the skill sets and then know, yes, this is my position, all the things.

Seth Fleischauer (04:25.431)
Ugh.

Allyson (04:54.324)
Check all the boxes.

Seth Fleischauer (04:56.46)
And I think Allison might want to go back and a second bachelor's now that she knows about UNO's digital history archives and projects.

Allyson (05:02.068)
I'm like, the center. Well, I just started thinking about all of the cassettes and then the different materials. I have a really good friend who's an archivist and one of her big missions is really trying to preserve certain content in digital that are on reels, VHSs, cassettes. So it's really important stuff, really important history to try to preserve.

Seth Fleischauer (05:25.496)
So let's back up a little bit. Tell us about the National World War II Museum. Give us like an elevator pitch. What is the museum all about?

Maddie (05:31.949)
Yeah, so the National WWII Museum are, and I'm probably not gonna get it exactly correct, our mission statement is to essentially tell the American experience in WWII how it was fought, why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today for future generations.

to prevent hopefully future world wars, but also like learn about what had happened. So we hear the thing. You learn about history, so you're not doomed to repeat it. But the museum is a giant museum. So it opened in 2000. And since I have grown up in New Orleans, I've watched the museum essentially grow up right alongside me. It is all encompassing of the American experience. It's crazy. There's giant artifacts, Higgins boats,

that hang from ceilings, histories of veterans that were there and their stories are now immortalized because that generation is mostly slowly leaving us. I believe only about less than 90 % of World War II veterans are still around. So it's a place to not only learn but to remember those people that fought in the war because many of them have already left us.

Seth Fleischauer (06:51.374)
Yeah, it's, I wanted to ask about that, right? Because I'm 45 years old. When I was growing up, World War II was very much in my consciousness, partially because I had a grandfather who was in the Air Force during the war. But we knew a lot of people, right? Like we, as kids, me growing up as an elder millennial or Gen X, depending on where you put 1979.

You know, we had people that we knew that were in World War II. And you mentioned that part of the mission is to talk about what it means today. My question is, like, as these people who actually experienced this fall out of our immediate orbit, what does it mean to today's youth, to the people learning about World War II? What does it mean to them to learn about it, to have these experiences?

Maddie (07:42.897)
Yeah, I think it means like lot of things. the biggest one probably like the sacrifice that a lot of these people gave. mean, most of them were far younger than I am, than most I feel like Americans are when this happens. Like a lot of these were young, like 20 something year old Americans that went to war and you can see like even like pictures of them like how aged they looked after even

though they were.

maybe like 22. But like what it means today, feel like a lot of that is seeing and a lot of it can also be like seen around today is I feel like the stories that we teach a lot about is like hate and prejudice and how a lot of these things are started because of people that like have I guess like hate in their heart or have prejudice towards any groups of people. So the stories I feel

like at least that our education department here at the museum and like our programs try to tell is like

Maddie (08:51.835)
how I guess to learn from that and to not continue to perpetuate like stereotypes or perpetuate hate towards any people who are different than you. I feel like that's something that you see a lot in history. World War II, big thing of that. There's a lot of different groups of people that are affected in the United States even like with different like laws or people aren't treated as equals. And so.

The museum and the people stories from that kind of are that, I guess, kind of lesson to learn to treat people with kindness. mean, war is also a big subject, but I don't have that really.

Allyson (09:32.318)
Well, and I wonder on that idea of all the different voices that you and your team work to bring into your programs, because you have such a plethora of programs and the different ways that people are able to engage with you live, engage with individuals in history and prerecorded ways and webcasts. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the programs that you brought into your distance learning experience for your learners.

and how they have the different voices attached to it.

Maddie (10:05.379)
Yeah, so we do some like synchronous and some asynchronous like distance learning programs. So the biggest one that I do is our virtual field trips, which are one on one lessons, essentially with classrooms where I zoom directly into the classrooms or teams or Google meet or any of the video conferencing platforms.

and have about 45 to 50 minutes of presentation that includes activities, oral histories, so bringing in people's actual stories and experiences. And then we leave time for artifact investigation, if there's time, and student questions that they might have. This is my favorite thing of my job.

being able to engage and talk directly to students and bring the museum to them. New Orleans isn't a very popular, I feel like museum destination. being able to zoom with kids, like even over in like the UK or up in Canada, like it's great.

Seth Fleischauer (10:59.66)
You

Maddie (11:06.799)
like lucky, but we also have ones that are like larger. So we do webinars that are kind of like one off programs on fun topics that maybe don't fully fit in the curriculum, but have some connections. Like last year, we partnered with the Eleanor Roosevelt, not the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library to put on a presentation about Eleanor Roosevelt. And

Allyson (11:18.771)
You

Allyson (11:30.185)
fun.

Maddie (11:31.675)
her contributions not only during the war but after the war, which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the curriculum, so an important thing. Those are like big programs that multiple classrooms can join at once. We have our electronic field trip.

which is a documentary made for students where we get to travel to all these different historic sites that I know when I was a student, I'd never think I'd ever be able to see or get to travel to. This year, it's going to be on post -war, so they're actually going to let me travel with them and go to Berlin and Nice, I think.

Allyson (12:11.14)
Yay! my gosh, so exciting!

Maddie (12:15.739)
places I never thought that I'd be able to see, even.

like see people, like students that are my age, like going through that, which is what we do. bring students that are usually like theater students audition, but they get auditions from all over wherever we're filming. But like 16 year old, like students who are actually like in high school talk about World War II, usually with their teacher and like show them on camera to other students that are their age so they can see somebody learning about it, that like it's coming from their peers essentially.

but we do those documentaries usually once a year. And then the most recent thing that we've done, which isn't technically digital, but eventually will become a more like online resource, is Operation Foot Locker. Yeah, it went on hiatus after COVID and then just last year restarted and became a part of my job.

Allyson (13:03.582)
Yay!

Maddie (13:14.462)
because it is a distance learning. So usually you think digital when you think distance learning, but we're also doing it out of distance via snail mail.

Allyson (13:24.552)
Yes, you're bringing it back to the founding of your museum correspondence courses, just like the gentleman you mentioned earlier.

Maddie (13:29.873)
Thank you.

Maddie (13:36.517)
So we literally pack and ship boxes of artifact trunks to teachers, send them curriculum, because we have curriculum on like kind of the big subjects, Europe, Pacific, home front, and then liberation. And then they keep them for a week, and then they just ship them back, because we send the return label and everything. But they actually get to engage with primary sources, like in their hands. They're gloved, because you know, it's really sensitive to hand -over.

Allyson (14:02.046)
That's important, museum practice.

Maddie (14:06.329)
I mean, that's something that I would have loved when I was in school. And now I get to send them to students. And oftentimes, they send us pictures. a lot of times, we actually get teachers sending us students' quotes. Or I had one classroom write letters, which is, I love receiving mail. It's so fun. And to have handwritten letters from students, it's just heartwarming.

Allyson (14:34.536)
And you said you're gonna take this virtual too. You'll have the virtual component to it soon.

Maddie (14:38.673)
Yeah, are actually, hopefully this year, going to try to create a better online platform with all of our resources. And with that, I want to do a more digital footlocker. So 3D kind of scans of artifacts that maybe are too fragile to ship or too big, like field telephones are like at least 30 pounds. But they tell a story, like artifacts we can't ship out.

Allyson (15:03.048)
Yeah.

Maddie (15:07.807)
But also like having a way for it's only so many are available so teachers can also have them online too.

Seth Fleischauer (15:16.94)
So I'm pulling together a couple of things here. You talked about the primary sources that bring this content to life in a way that is difficult to imagine doing just with words, right? You're painting a picture for the students about the American experience in World War II, and you're kind of leading them to some, you know,

I wouldn't call them revolutionary conclusions that war is bad and hate is bad and prejudice is bad and all of those things working together will point you towards more bad things. But I'm wondering, as an institution that has limited engagements with people, yet you're talking about these huge ideas of tolerance and acceptance of the idea that hate can lead to war.

Where do you see the impact of these limited engagements towards those goals?

Maddie (16:24.173)
Yeah, I mean I feel like that's a hard one because with distance learning a lot of the times like we zoom in we Talk to these students maybe for one hour out of like their school year And after that, mean these are students that are across the world like we may never see them again We may never even like present to their school again. Maybe it's a one -off program but a lot of it I feel like for me what I see is like after we've

present some of these programs. We get a lot with like our program on Japanese incarceration is the questions that students ask after. Especially with younger students a lot of them are like will voice like actual like

like they're appalled by it. They're confused as to why something like this would happen. And then that one specifically, like that story is guided through somebody who experienced it firsthand, a woman who is still around today, Eva Hachiguchi. And she was their age experiencing this happening to her and her family. But I mean, it's hard to know what these students go on after and do, but just like hearing their questions

that they have or just even them commenting on what happened. I can tell that especially this generation of students and what you can see how active they are politically or how active they are in their communities that there's a lot of goodness out there and hope for, I guess, Gen Alpha, that's the generation.

Allyson (18:01.864)
You

Seth Fleischauer (18:02.231)
and

Maddie (18:05.263)
be impacted by these things. And so just like their questions or their like voicing of like how horrible a lot of this stuff was after. I mean, it's bad that it happened, but it's like nice to hear that these students like can know that this is like a lot of these things are wrong.

Seth Fleischauer (18:23.926)
And so that speaks to kind of the dynamic approach to teaching history, where there are a lot of things that happened and there are different audiences that might be seeking out certain information that might be receptive to certain information. How does the World War II Museum meet the needs of each of these like unique audiences with this

topic, is super popular and deep, but you can also take a lot of different angles and how to talk about

Maddie (18:58.01)
Yeah.

So I feel like as far as like our education department goes, usually what we try to do is a lot of our content is created kind of at that like sort of like 10th grade level. I mean World War II historically I feel like in like national standards is taught in between seventh and 12th grade. We don't really get a lot of youngins learning about it. You can understand why. But I feel like a lot of what I do is communicate

Allyson (19:23.144)
Yeah

Maddie (19:28.827)
with the people who are booking the program, whether it be teachers, the librarians, or we do get a lot of older audiences, lifelong learners beforehand. And just based on what the teachers are currently teaching, we ask them a lot of questions before, depending on the subject, on if they've approached some things with their classroom. We're able to kind of tier up or tier down. There's certain like...

activities that we won't do with like fifth graders that we will do with like 12th graders, which we have some like scenarios of like, what would you do in this case? How would you like vote on this specific like situation and like to do with like reporting on the Holocaust? There's one that a reporter would stay and like cover a rally and like.

maybe not make it out safe, but there's one that he would leave and not. And like, that's not something we would do with like young students, but older students. we just kind of tier it based on the grade level and the teacher's preference as well.

Seth Fleischauer (20:30.414)
With all of this work that you do, I'm wondering if you can dive into what we call a golden moment. So this technology, the distance learning technologies, they provide unique learning opportunities. They provide access to things that students would otherwise not have access to. And we all know that being purveyors of the tech and of the content. But there are these moments where

It absolutely works exactly how you thought it could or it even exceeds those expectations. Can you tell us a story or two of some golden moments in your work?

Maddie (21:09.625)
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the golden moments that I have are very closely related to each other. We do a program for free every year for Hispanic Heritage Month on Latinos in World War II. And every year we get a lot of bookings, but we get to do it not usually with history classes, but a lot of Spanish classes or yeah, Spanish teachers will book the program.

And in those schools, we see actually a large demographic of Latino students. so presenting about that, something that I didn't learn about in school, that's not really in the textbooks, and hearing students specifically talk about how it's important or how excited they are to see people of their background, people that are like them in history, I feel like...

that's like a golden moment every time. Whether it's that, whether it's like other programs, we get it, I feel like for especially for like African Americans in World War Two, American Indians in World War Two, like things that I know that my class breezed over, like we didn't really learn about, but these students are just so excited to like see history through people who are like them, which I think is a great thing that we do here. And we do that through

these programs, but also through like the actual people, like I had said earlier, like the oral histories that we have these actual people who, like are from these different backgrounds talking about their experiences. So I think for me, I sometimes you know, getting those lulls where like you're doing all these presentations back to back and like, I'm doing the same thing over and over again.

those are the moments that I'm like, yeah, like that is why I love this job. Like I get to talk to all these different students, all these different backgrounds and somehow they find a way to connect to it. Other golden moments of course, being a person, love recognition. I love giving thanks and I love presenting to lifelong learner groups because they're

Seth Fleischauer (23:17.662)
Hmm.

Maddie (23:24.727)
always so nice and always so complimentary. And they just like, they just want to like, learn they just want to like be I don't know if they want to learn them and be entertained for an hour. They want to be social. Like, they're always like just the nicest they pay attention. They ask so many good questions. And I feel like I learned something every time from lifelong learner groups. They're always like, this was great. Like, have you read this book? And I'm like, I'm it to like,

Allyson (23:29.182)
So lovely.

Maddie (23:54.287)
my team we are right now. So like, feel like two different kind of like ends of that, like students who really engage and really relate to it, but then also like older audiences that are just so thankful to like.

have this history, a lot of it, their history, a lot of them being from the World War II generation, still being talked about, still being taught, and they know that these are programs that are initially built for students, so that kind of, feel like, also they love to hear that students are hearing about them as well.

Seth Fleischauer (24:28.558)
Hmm.

Allyson (24:29.262)
So beautiful because it really is that, you know, sometimes when you study history, you feel like it's the dates, you have certain names, there are this time to this time or specific battles or, you know, insert something that relates to a date. So just to hear that all of your golden moments are really connecting to the voices and helping bring that out for the students, like that real connection to the people is just so powerful.

Tami Moehring (24:56.464)
I was going to say when...

Seth Fleischauer (24:57.006)
I wonder, do you have any examples of like...

Tammy, you start your sentence over, please.

Tami Moehring (25:04.069)
yeah, I was just gonna say I had the great opportunity to enjoy the National World War II Museum's program with Maddie in March about women in World War II. She delivered that to a group of lifelong learners that I was part of. And they actually had an amazing woman that was part of the women's

Army Corps, WAC as they called it, in the audience. She was 96 years old and she got to share her story with all of the other residents afterwards and it was just a great opportunity to say, you know, get to know your fellow residents a little bit more. So was a heartwarming moment. They did a big story on her at the, in their little newsletter they have at their community. So it was a great opportunity. And because of Maddie's program, they were able to talk about her.

Allyson (25:25.416)
You

Tami Moehring (25:51.288)
and all the great things to kind of highlight that.

Seth Fleischauer (25:56.866)
think all of these examples that you're providing really speak to how all -encompassing this world event was. Not just for Americans, obviously that's your focus, but you know they didn't call it a World War for nothing. It was so significant and it's so important to tell these stories and we're so grateful that there are institutions like the World War II Museum to continue to provide those experiences to students.

I'm hoping that you can answer for us our titular question. It's the question that we ask everybody. Maddie Roach, why distance learning?

Maddie (26:36.421)
Yeah, mean, so I'll start kind of with like, I guess like a little bit of background about the museum's distance learning. So I feel like it goes kind of partially like in reason why. So our museum's distance learning program actually started post Katrina. It's like right after Hurricane Katrina, the museum, of course, I mean, being in New Orleans sustained a little bit of damage. It wasn't that bad. This area is kind of higher than

what you see like the photos, like historical photos of it were in a different sort of area than where like the levee broke. But the museum realized that even when the museums closed, like there's still ways that it can like serve the community or educate people.

So in this horrible event, mean, a very horrible, very tragic event, the museum saw that there was still ways that the museum could keep giving to the community, I guess, keep contributing. And so I think that in senses like that, that's a big reason why distance learning. But this museum's also in one place, right?

Seth Fleischauer (27:25.475)
Hmm.

Maddie (27:47.513)
Most things, most buildings, most like stuff like this is in one place and people are all over the world and

this world, our digital technological age is just the way to bridge the gap. I can talk to students in the UK and Colombia, anywhere and still be able to bring the museum to them. And we are all people. We all have very similar experiences. And to be able to see how

similar we are but also like how different we are, it's just like incredible. So I mean there's always going to be instances where you can't get to someplace physically but you still want to experience it so why not experience it digitally?

Seth Fleischauer (28:33.858)
Hehehehe. Hehehehe.

Allyson (28:36.213)
Yes!

Seth Fleischauer (28:39.278)
Bravo, so well said. Well, Maddie, thank you so much for being here. For our listeners, if you want to hear more stuff like this, we have interviewed some amazing content providers over our, I think we're at like episode 40 something episodes. So please check out the podcast at cilc .org slash podcast. Check the show notes for links to Maddie's programs. In addition to a promotional video I heard about when we were talking

Allyson (28:53.203)
Yes!

Seth Fleischauer (29:07.224)
pre -recording that has Maddie in it and is already outdated, but still I think has some good stuff in there. And thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. If you want to support the podcast, please rate it, leave us a review, tell a friend, follow us. And if you want to know the answer to the question, why distance learning, please check out the people we highlight on this podcast. These are the people who are leveraging this amazing technology to truly transform the learning experience.

Allyson (29:10.964)
Yes!

Allyson (29:18.708)
Thank you.

Seth Fleischauer (29:36.45)
Why distance learning? Because it's accessible and it's awesome. See you next time.