Group items tagged

This website, while providing a fairly detailed summary of The Reconstruction, I have bookmarked because of the images it contains. I think pictures and images are a useful tool in shaping students perceptions of history; as Erin evidenced in her last lesson plan, providing students with a model for critically examining images could prove very beneficial to building on their critical thinking abilities.

The Valley of the Shadow (also called the Valley Project) website is a part of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The material in the site documents the lives of two communities during the Civil War period; one community from the South and one community from the North. The site is an online library or an archive filled with primary resources such as letter, diaries, census records, government records, newspapers, speeches, maps, images and other materials. The site contains thousands of documents. The archive is divided into three sections: The Eve of War (Fall 1859-Spring 1861), The War Years (Spring 1861-Spring 1865), and The Aftermath (Spring 1865-Fall 1870). An example of one such document is a letter written in August, 1864 by a young militiaman to his parents telling them that he is well and that he will be sending home his pay. I have added a few lines because I find it so interesting and compelling. The letter comes from a camp near Petersburg. Dear Parents it is with the Greatest of Pleashure that I seat My self to inform you and My Brothers and Sisters that I like it well and am well feal Hartey like ite beter now than Ever I did I hope that youens Ar all well and all the Rest about [unclear: tomstorm] ile now state to you that I Received your Letter last Knight And was Glad to here from youens And was glad to here that Youenes wasened yet dissturbed By The Johneys Rebes you Stated in your letter that tha Wes moveing every thing out Of Town now if tha wold be men tha wold take In the same document but another page, the young man writes about his pay. Read this letter we ar getting Paid off to day I draw 1.20.10 that is one hundrad 20 dollars 10 cts Ile ex press 1 hundrade 10 dollars and mebbey fifteen dollars I dont want to ceep so mutch money here I cend it to you and if you want to make youse of it whi you may get the Chirldren wat ever tha want that is in the eating line And Close but you must be A littl

I ran out of room in the box above.....anyway, I am not certain what the citation rules are regarding this but I found the letter on the website that I have bookmarked, The Valley of the Shadow. Anyway, it is a great site….there is soooo much more.

This website contains a great list of Historic Sites in DC - for example, I have bookmarked the page for the Old Stone House in Georgetown. If you select, "List of Sites" - you will be taken to a listing by neighborhoods of other historic sites in the DC area. This could allow you to search for places near your school that could be a great resource to incorporate into your lessons. Many, including the Old Stone House, offer tours throughout the day. The Old Stone House is also staffed by well-informed Park Rangers who are eager to share their knowledge.

This website is a great reference page for finding resources based on historical periods.

Smithsonian's History Explorer provides a multitute of resources for teachers including lessons, activities, interactive activities, examples of artifacts, and professional development opportunities for educators. One can easily search for desired resources by selecting the grade level, type of resource desired, and the time period. A variety of American History related subjects are displayed and from that list, one can select the desired resource.

I'm not certain this hasn't already been posted; I did a search in our groups and didn't see it. iLearn Technology is an interesting and useful blog, where people post descriptions and links to other tech-savvy web sites and applications that can be a great resource to teachers. Though most of the sites I have looked at would probably be aimed more towards K-6 classrooms, others extend at least into middle school. Much like our diigo, each post is tagged with keywords so that you may search their site by subject or category.

In looking for primary sources and documents for lesson plans, I have noticed that most of the search results center on U.S. history and its related documents. I wanted to find a website that might provide links to a broader collection of documents on world history. This website has links to European historical documents, broken down by country as well as time period. Each link leads to a collection of other links where one can search for primary documents. It's admittedly a bit curious that this website is the product of an employee of Brigham Young University; I cannot tell if this bears any reflection on websites that are linked here, but the collection is extensive.