TEMPLE X AUGMENTED REALITY ASHBURTON COMMUNITY TOUR
Children from Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School and Baltimore’s Ashburton community are building relationships while making history through the Temple X program. A collaboration between Beth Tfiloh, Liberty Grace Church of God, Towson University, Project Wave, and other organizations, Temple X is developing an engaging augmented reality historic walking tour of the Ashburton/Forest Park neighborhoods. The tour will tell the story of growing up through the eyes of a white Jewish child and an African American Christian child in the 1950s.
The children worked remotely to develop an app for the interactive walking tour. Throughout this process, children are learning more about the neighborhood’s interracial dynamic – both then and now – by interviewing Baltimore natives such as the Rev. Dr. Alvin Hathaway, pastor at the historic Union Baptist Church, and Beth Tfiloh Congregation Executive Director Eve Kresin Steinberg. The children are learning about one another’s cultures while getting a better understanding of technology.
“It’s been an amazing experience,” said Beth Tfiloh’s Dr. Susan Holzman. “To watch the kids and hear the questions they ask shows that they really get it. They weren’t afraid to ask the hard questions, and to see that kind of openness among the children was such a joy.
