Tomorrow marks the 23rd anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Google Cultural Institute has thirteen exhibitions related to The Fall of the Iron Curtain. These interactive exhibitions let you click through a timeline of events depicted in images, videos, and documents. Revolution in Berlin is the exhibition that depicts events leading up and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Fall of the Berlin Wall takes viewers through the four years immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

Watching the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the moments in my childhood when I realized that I really enjoyed learning about world events. I distinctly remember watching the ABC Nightly News that evening (on and old black and white T.V., we got a color T.V. for Christmas six weeks later). On YouTube I found some clips from that broadcast. I’ve embedded one of those clips below.

Applications for Education
The Google Cultural Institute’s The Fall of the Iron Curtain exhibits are good examples of how online media is making textbooks obsolete. The content available in these exhibits has more depth than anything I’ve seen on same topic in any of the high school social studies textbooks I have seen.