This site rocks. A collection of excellent sources very well-organised and covering each period of US history since British settlement right up to the twenty-first century.
I have created a very successful lesson/activity around this painting.
The details are as follows. This window has this year's assignment. The next reply has the previous years.
Advice:
WHAP Review Activity: The Twittering Masses
Review activity (mostly 1914- and East Asia)
Description - I previously set up 103 discussions on turnitin.com for this lesson so they post into that person's discussion board and all replies are kept under the initial post. This year they posted on our classes Ning.com in the discussion forum.
Grading is also difficult - Since not every one will have the same amount of replies - people are more likely to write to Hitler than Cui Jian for instance. So, I am grading the posts holistically out of 10 (I often only have 100-200 points in a quarter, so for instance a test might only be worth 40 points).
I have students use a heading that states who [character] is tweeting what topic they are focusing on and who they are writing to.
I would be interested in feedback or improvements people think they can make on this lesson - should I use Moodle, [Again, I have switched to Ning.com] etc.? Many thanks.
And you can add or subtract people as you wish, so we have actually added Marcus Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, Stephen Biko, and Emiliano Zapata to our role play and taken the painters (of this painting) out of the role play -
Write up for students:
Go to http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1162771/The-Internet-sensation-dinner-party-painting-103-historical-guests--spot.html#comments to see who all these individuals are, in color.
The rules:
You will imagine that each of the historical actors above has access to twitter, the expanded edition, 140 words as compared to 140 characters, to communicate to the other guests present.
You will choose six of them (from my list below - my list is the final list - some people pictured have been replaced) to role-play in the "Twittering Masses."
As your historical
See previous post for advice.
This is how I set it up the first two years without specific WHAP content or themes:
The rules:
You will imagine that each of the historical actors above has access to twitter, the expanded edition, to communicate to the other guests present.
You will choose up to four (at least three) of them to role play in the "Twittering Masses" role play.
As your historical person, during the Twittering Masses role play you will write, "tweet," at least four other persons. Two of the people should be in close proximity to you based on the painting above. Another tweet should go to the person you feel closest to (not by proximity) at the party - this could be based on ideology (MLK Jr. and Gandhi), background (Tagore and Gandhi), lifestyle (Gandhi and Mother Theresa), etc. Explain in your tweet why you are writing them. The other tweet should go to the person you see as most opposed, or farthest from you - Gandhi and Hitler or Gandhi and Gates or Gandhi and Churchill - in this tweet you should either try to bridge the gap between your differences or explain why the person is wrong in their beliefs.
If you have only three guests - you will need to make 5 initial tweets.
You will respond to each initial tweet. Then who knows . . .
All tweets should have some connection to WHAP content or themes. You may want to comment on the surroundings or other guests . . .
"The Open Society Archives (OSA) at the Central European University in Budapest is an archival laboratory. While actively collecting, preserving, and making openly accessible documents related to recent history and human rights, they continue to experiment with new ways to contextualize primary sources, developing innovative tools to explore, represent, or bridge traditional archival collections in a digital environment."
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation's web site offers "free access to the full texts of thousands of documents relating to the politics of the last quarter of a century".
"The Germany Under Reconstruction digital collection [at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,] provides a varied selection of publications in both English and German from the period immediately following World War II. Many are publications of the U.S. occupying forces, including reports and descriptions of efforts to introduce U.S.-style democracy to Germany. Some of the other books and documents describe conditions in a country devastated by years of war, efforts at political, economic and cultural development, and the differing perspectives coming from the U.S. and British zones and the Russian zone of occupation. At the same time, the Germans themselves and the occupying forces look back at the National Socialist period and try to come to terms with what had happened."
"The LBC/IRN Audio Archive, (London Broadcasting Company / Independent Radio News audio archive) consists of 7,000 reel-to-reel tapes in a collection that runs from 1973 to the mid-1990s. It is the most important commercial radio archive in the UK and provides a unique audio history of the period. This digitised collection focuses on the most noteworthy content - approximately 3,000 hours of recordings relating to news and current affairs. The digitised archive contains invaluable recordings of a wide range of broadcasts including coverage of the Falklands war, the miners' strike, Northern Ireland, the whole of the Thatcher period of government and recordings of the first hour of UK commercial radio including the first commercial radio news bulletin."
You can only listen if you are part of a tertiary institution which has a paid subscription through the Athens ID system (v. annoying!) however you're able to read the transcripts for free.
"History in Focus provides original articles, book reviews, and links to historical resources. The site is provided by the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. All material has been chosen and edited by our editorial team."
"ODS covers all types of official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. Older UN documents are, however, added to the system on a daily basis. ODS also provides access to the resolutions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council from 1946 onwards. "
this is an interesting article - a book review. This is effectiove because the second book reviewed is one of the most referenced ones on the end of communism in Europe.