Group items tagged

I go through the Classpress.net History Headlines every day or two and then produce this digest, which can be subscribed to as an RSS feed.

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As my son marvels at the battle diaries, postcards, letters and photographs, and scrupulously unfolds war maps depicting the strategic battlelines in the fields of Gallipoli and the Somme, he surrenders to the pleasure of discovering history by his own hands. The touch, the sight, the smell of these items, each tells a story of their own and he takes his time in absorbing it all. Then in true Gen Y form, he reaches for the digital camera and begins to photograph the maps, crests, war pay books, menus of Christmas dinners - detailed and digital proof that he has, at last found, what he was searching for.

Yes, the glorious United States of the 1950s. Surely it was all good back then, unless, of course, you were female, or black ("negro"), or Catholic or Jewish, or disabled, or poor. Or, if you were young. Of course we know that American "tea partiers" (even they seem to have discovered that "teabaggers" wasn't the right term) are as weak in the history department as they are on economics knowledge, but they are hardly alone in their belief in some wondrous mythical past...

he Pioneers Violin, 1971, directed by B. Stepantsev, Soyuzmultfilm. A Nazi soldier tries to force a young Soviet boy scout to play a German song on his violin. Instead he defiantly plays the [then] Soviet national anthem, The International, and is shot by the Nazi. Fyodor Khitruk: Patriotic themes existed and were included into the plan of Goskino (the State Film Committee)...We werent pushed to make films based on these themes, but the political repertoire was put together by what they approved or did not approve, as in feature films and literature. The Pioneers Violin probably wasnt promoted by somebody. They didnt write the scripts on Vasiliev Street [Goskino]. As I remember, Boris Stepanstev who made this film, made it honestly thinking it was needed.Category:Film & Animation

Interesting story that links Indian Removal (1830s) with the Civil War and Reconstruction, then includes the consequences of the Dawes Act - which benefited Cheadle's family but few Natives.

A multimedia site from the German magazine Der Speigel, with pictures of the building of the Berlin Wall, as well as some then-and-now comparison pictures.

Plague germ was the same then as it is now. (Do people not realize it spreads more slowly now because everyone doesn't have a respiratory infection from global cooling?)

1492. Columbus. The date and the name provoke many questions related to the linking of very different parts of the world, the Western Hemisphere and the Mediterranean. What was life like in those areas before 1492? What spurred European expansion? How did European, African and American peoples react to each other? What were some of the immediate results of these contacts?1492: AN ONGOING VOYAGE addresses such questions by examining the rich mixture of societies coexisting in five areas of this hemisphere before European arrival. It then surveys the polyglot Mediterranean world at a dynamic turning point in its development. The exhibition examines the first sustained contacts between American people and European explorers, conquerors and settlers from 1492 to 1600. During this period, in the wake of Columbus's voyages, Africans also arrived in the hemisphere, usually as slaves. All of these encounters, some brutal and traumatic, others more gradual, irreversibly changed the way in which peoples in the Americas led their lives. The dramatic events following 1492 set the stage for numerous cultural interactions in the Americas which are still in progress - a complex and ongoing voyage.

Many of the points made here have been made in other places, but they cannot be restated enough. Every history teacher needs to read this, and then read it again after a month of teaching

Such a tragedy

Recommended for grades 5-8, this site offers an interesting overview of states and Native American tribes. Students learn about states, rivers, mountains, regions, tribes and then practice locating these on maps with a timer.

Robespierre's discussion on the use of Terror in the French Revolution. Gives a little background, then parts of his speech

Materials for SS teacher

Contains many interesting perspectives and resources for history and social studies teachers. I use Bloglines to subscribe to blogs like this and keep them all in one place. Google Reader is also popular, I think. If you subscribe to good quality blogs like this then all you have to remember is the address of your blog reader and you can come across many interesting viewpoints from people who are actually in the classroom - not ideologically-driven careerists who publish through official documents from their ivory towers and have long since left the classroom! Long live educational democracy! Viva la revolution!

An excellent newsletter to sign up for. They're not just try to make money and they are historians and know what they're talking about. If you're on twitter then #historyteacher is the place to be!

Would be an excellent student activity if you lived in a country with a significant and extant material history. You register with this network and nominate run-down buildings that you and your students can then restore, under the guidance of these volunteers. I guess there are some ethical problems there, but it would still be a wonderful experience for the students.