Group items tagged

From the website: History Matters is "a project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Visible Knowledge Project. . . . Designed for high school and college teachers and students of U.S. history survey courses, this site serves as a gateway to web resources and offers unique teaching materials, first-person primary documents, and guides to analyzing historical evidence. We emphasize materials that focus on the lives of ordinary Americans and actively involve students in analyzing and interpreting evidence."

Well, it looks like a student in this group shared this in the past, but what a great website! I'll put up some more sticky notes. This website features a large number of primary source material of different media and is strong in its content. Beyond that, this site features information about the methods historians use (interesting to high school students, applicable to college students), a database of reviewed websites, lesson plans, syllabi, and teaching tips. A pretty comprehensive resource.

This website deals with the History of Jim Crow and has many valuable resources for teachers. The History and Geography sections of this website are quite rich in information and I think well-organized and easy to use. The website provides the in-depth essays and/or other materials to be used in the lessons. The American Literature section provides some interesting unit and lesson plans for well-known books such as A Raisin in the Sun and To Kill a Mockingbird. The Teacher Resources section provides a variety of lessons… some involve images, music, literature, simulations, etc. Quite a few seem to incorporate the PBS series The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Overall, I am very impressed with this website. My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird and I think the Unit on this book is interesting in the way they link it to an integrated literature/social studies unit on the case of the Scottsboro Boys and life in the 1930s.

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.

In reading this last chapter of Takaki, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to my personal favorite from this genre of "alternative" interpretations of U.S. History, Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." His chapter on the history of Reconstruction is very insightful and I remember being utterly shocked the first time I read it. In searching for lesson plans based around his text, I found this website. You simply have to sign up for membership (it's free) and you have access to resources and lesson plans based around each of the chapters in his seminal work. This website is co-produced by Howard Zinn himself.

In reading this last chapter of Takaki, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to my personal favorite from this genre of "alternative" interpretations of U.S. History, Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." His chapter on the history of Reconstruction is very insightful, and in searching for lesson plans based around his text, I found this website. You simply have to sign up for membership (it's free) and you have access to resources and lesson plans based around each of the chapters in his seminal work. This website is co-produced by Howard Zinn himself.

I discovered this website while looking for information on Chinese and Japanese immigration. This website supports the newspaper Harper's Weekly that was published from 1857 to 1912. The publication reported on the relevant issues of the day such as immigration, slavery and presidential elections. Not only do they have the actual papers in their archive, they also provide summaries of some of the articles. There is a section dedicated to Immigration and Ethnic America. While there is a great deal of information on the site that is fee to all, one must subscribe to gain access to the entire site. The site also provides links to many other websites that support learning such as lessons, activities, and games. Some of their links are oriented around subjects that were relevant during the time the papers were published. There is also a featured "cartoon" of the day that is taken from the period of 1857 to 1912. It is a great resource for teachers!

Goldmine! Annotated Civics Website Collection. Links to some fantastic civic resources - with brief descriptions of each. A nice collection of current issues, civic procedures and ESOL resources. Also some interesting websites about civics for folks with limited resources/incomes - hmmm . . .

Say what you will about Harry Truman, but his library website has a vast cache of social studies links and resources, organized by topic. Some of the items go beyond social studies and into the realm of homework help and other teaching strategies. You may need to a dig a little bit to find exactly what you are looking for, but you can probably somehow get to it from here.

This next post connects back to the lesson plan on interpreting political cartoons. This website - published through the Library of Congress - is nothing short of fantastic. Herbert Block's career covers an incredible span of the 20th century. Using this website as a resource, you can find insightful political cartoons of almost any event from the Great Depression to the Clinton era.

FREE is a website pool of teaching and learning resources from various branches of the federal government. From the website: "More than 1,500 federally supported teaching and learning resources are included from dozens of federal agencies. New sites are added regularly. . . . FREE is maintained by Peter Kickbush and Kirk Winters, Office of Communications and Outreach, with support from the Development Services Team in the Office of the Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of Education."

This site is amazing, I was just playing around with it and I am definitely using some of the resources for my unit. :)

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.

The website for Colonial Williamsburg is in a word, sweet. Not only do they have areas for teachers and other research but they offer a ton of multimedia items. There's a daily today in the 1770's newsletter that has selections from the Virginia Gazette and that's just the beginning of the "wealth of online resources" (there words not mine) that they provide. What makes it so great is that Colonial Williamsburg is relatively speaking, so close! Using this website when teaching about 18th century life and then taking a field trip there would be a great way to tie everything together.

FBI's youth website. Probably designed to entice kids to want to be in, support and trust the FBI. Some very cool stuff (no lesson plans). Check out the super rad "History" link!

This website, made at the turn of the millennium, goes through the major themes of the past millennium, and organizes them based on timeline, location, major players, popular food, and basic overview.

The best part about this website, which makes it different from most of the Social Justice education websites I've encountered, is the section specifically for parents. Most sites are geared for the classroom specifically through teachers and students but a fundamental and important component of building communities is parent involvement. It is D.C. based and it also has a great list of resource materials for teachers.

The Holocaust History Project is a website dedicated to presenting information about the Holocaust. The site is an archive of primary sources including letters, essays, photographs, and much more. There is an incredibly compelling text and audio presentation of Heinrich Himmler speech to a secret meeting of a group of SS officers in 1943. Himmler's speech tells part of the story of the Holocaust. Any of the material on this site could be used to support a unit or lesson on the Holocaust. The site also has a "Q & A" section listing all the questions they are received and answered over the years. One can also submit a question on the "Question Form." As an activity, students could develop questions based on research and submit those questions. There are also several Youtube entries that could be used along side the information found on the Holocaust History Project Website. While there are many to select from, I found this one to be quite moving….check it out.on www.youtube.com. The title of the movie is 8. The Holocaust History Project. The movie ends with a sign that states "Think about what you saw."

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.

While I am not sure of the best way to highlight different pages of this website to suit the format of Diigo, I think this could be a really helpful website. The "Volumes" link takes the viewer to a section where you can go through the volumes page by page. These writings are a great primary source/document to bring into the classroom.... so much more exciting to read the real thing than just see a mention of it in a text book.

Following off of my lesson plan from last week, I wanted to see what kind of resources there are for the social studies teacher to introduce the discipline of anthropology in the classroom. This website, produced by the American Anthropological Association, is a treasure trove of links to other sites regarding anthropology. You could literally search for hours on this site for potential resources, divided by both region and sub-discipline.

We might be able to use this in 542 next semester when we get into the epistemologies of each social studies discipline.

I'm posting this site for a number of reasons. The first being that it relates directly to the Takaki chapter we read this week. Angel Island was a sort of "Ellis Island" for west coast immigration, and this is their historical website. I wanted to find images of picture brides, and this site came up as having a lot of images from that period of japanese immigration. So this website could be very useful for those teachers who want to incorporate images as primary sources in teaching this part of American history. Additionally, my friend's mother had recently been to Italy and came back with a number of ancestral records she has asked me to translate. This led me to question what sources Asian Americans can use to trace their own ancestry in this country - though unfortunately Angel Island does not offer resources similar to that of Ellis Island.

These sites help you locate historic places and monuments in your region.