A Glutton’s Supply of Resources | Teachinghistory.org’s “spotlights”

Yesterday’s post took a look at Teachinghistory.org’s free Civil War poster.  Today’s post is taking a look at the websites “spotlights”.  This is a newer series of resources that are intended to provide material to educators in conjunction with calendar events, both national holidays and anniversaries.  For example, there are two spotlights currently available on the website–and the number will grow–one on Constitution Day and one on remembering 9/11.  The content and the spotlights evolve and change throughout the year.  Jennifer Rosenfeld, the Outreach Director at Teachinghistory.org, explains,

Our idea is to update the spotlights continuously throughout the year so they will be evolving over time as new content comes forward.  For example, the “Constitution Day spotlight” will have all the material we have on that topic from our site, updated to include our most recent content additions.  Teachers can access it year-round.

The Constitution Day spotlight contains lessonplans and links to other resources that provide creative means for teaching about the Constitution in various contexts.  Featured are 1) a link to Colonial Williamsburg’s electronic field trips, featuring A More Perfect Union, available free for a limited time; 2) a lessonplan that considers the constitutional issues surrounding the Watergate scandal; and, 3) picking a civics textbook–the historian advises a good curriculum over a good textbook.  Beyond this are additional Learning Resources, such as a link to the National Constitution Center and a link about the Federal Judiciary provided by Teachinghistory.org, Teaching Resources, such as the game “Do I have the Right?” and “Resources for Units on Early American Government”, and Quizzes.

The spotlight on 9/11 provides a compilation of resources.  This is a great example of what Teachinghistory.org tries to provide: in addition to a great deal of original content, it also culls the internet and provides a one-stop shop for some of the web’s best tools.  For this spotlight, they feature short reviews and links to websites devoted to the memory of 9/11: 1) the first review is of “The Sonic Memorial Project” website, which focuses on the sounds that mark the history of the World Trade Center; 2) next is a review of the “September 11 Digital Archive” website, focused on stories people shared; and, finally, 3) is actually a blog post by eighth grade teacher Elizabeth Schaefer who shared her lessonplan on a 9/11 project that teaches students not only about events they cannot remember, but of which all the adults in their life can, and also useful skills employed by historians to learn about past events.  Here, again, there are additional, Learning Resources, Teaching Resources and, for 9/11, Remember and Reflect resources.

This is one of the real advantages in using Teachinghistory.org: not only are there great materials for learning history, there are also teaching approaches for historical method.  Not only does this make the subject more interesting for students, it also makes it more memorable, and the hands-on approach teaches essential citizenship skills that are highly applicable beyond the history classroom and an assortment of names and dates on recall.

(Note: the content on these spotlights changes with regularity, so do not be surprised if I have highlighted material that has been cycled–it is still there, it may simply no longer be on the featured content box.)

Visit the Constitution Day’s spotlight at this link: http://teachinghistory.org/spotlight/constitution-day

Visit the 9/11 spotlight at this link: http://teachinghistory.org/spotlight/september11

History Education Resources | A review of Teachinghistory.org’s Civil War poster

Even if these were not momentous times we are living through (does this make the ’90s seem dull–all that prosperity and pop-culture?), there are always reminders of momentous times.  Last Sunday we remembered 9/11, ten years later.  This year is the National Road’s bicentennial as we remember the pioneer spirit and its side-effects in expanding and founding our nation.  Next year will inaugurate the bicentennial of the War of 1812.  And, of course, this year marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.  We study these subjects, anyway, even if there is no rounded-number anniversary, but when these moments come it is worth a little extra emphasis to put the past in perspective, both in terms of the chronology and years since the event, but also in the progress or regress in human actions from point A to today’s point B.  Plus, there a wealth of opportunities and resources spring up on such anniversaries that are well worth exploiting!

In honor of the Civil War’s big birthday and the start of the new school year, Teachinghistory.org has unveiled a new free poster for classroom walls.  This poster, much like their general history poster (click here), it is geared as much to exploring how we learn about the past–not as from a textbook, but as a historian doing research–and the types of questions and sources we engage for that purpose.  In other words, it is about historical method.  The Civil War poster also tries to tempt students, to tease them, to pull them into the investigation on their own accord.  I think it may well be successful in sowing seeds of curiosity in young minds, but any teacher who posts it has to take advantage!  It cannot just go up as a passive “tool”–it needs to be built upon.  This is something that a lot teachers do not do.  They tape it up and hope the poster will speak for itself and inspire or teach.  To help with this, Teachinghistory.org provides an additional research: an interactive online version of the poster.

This is the perfect opportunity for history teachers and parents to make use of and build upon a great eye-catching, tool.  At http://teachinghistory.org/civil-war, the poster’s pictured artifacts and documents are presented.   Scroll over them, and click on the individual items to be linked to lesson-plans and videos for instructional ideas and resources.  For example, there is a series of videos of historian Tom Thruston who explains a book of slave receipts to expound upon the realities and legalization of slavery, its regional influence and its absolutely mundane, accepted nature of its existence in American society.  These are designed to assist the teacher in using the artifacts that the poster includes.  Because of the different types of artifacts, one has the opportunity to make a several learning projects for small groups and build upon each group’s learning experience by having them teach the subject to their fellow classmates, either in small groups or in class presentations.

Once a teacher has used the poster as part of the active learning, the poster remains an active learning tool.  Students who look up at the slave receipt and the other artifacts will be reminded of the exercise and will continue to think about it and make links that they had not thought of before every time they see it.  Active, thoughtful, considering learning is the the great skill that all subject should teach, with each subject enhancing it in particular ways and bringing the subject’s value to it.  History has its own particular value that, among other things, encourages self-reflection.  The Civil War is one of American History’s most important moments for self-reflection.  If in using this poster, teachers initiate the students in active learning of the event, it will be a great tool for educators to introduce that national self-reflection along with history and historical method.  Well done, Teachinghistory.org, well done.

 

Tomorrow, look for my review of Teachinghistory.org’s Spotlight series.