Interactive Posters, Reading Primary Sources, and Milestone Documents

This year, TeachingHistory.org created an interactive poster for the classroom dedicated to historical thinking. Even better, they created two versions- one for elementary and one for secondary! The secondary one also contains several Tennessee images. (Also, to note: there's also a Civil War interactive poster)

After playing around with both versions, I started to look at the links provided by each poster.

• Primary Source Quiz, "To the Source!": This will definitely make your students think about what it takes to be a primary source. 
• Making Sense of Maps: This is a good resource for anyone utilizing maps in the classroom. It provides several great questions, such as making a flat map out of a globe, and who made this map and why.

Be sure to check out these great resources to use in your classroom! Please post here how you use these in your classrooms.

Posted by Ashleigh Oatts - 08/27/2012, 09:54 AM

What Was There- Local History Meets Technology

If you receive the e-newsletter from TeachingHistory.org, this will not be a surprise for you, but I was so excited to see the special "Tech for Teachers" entry about What Was There in this month's issue. 

At first I got excited just about the local connections (one option is to examine it over Google StreetView to see how it has changed over time), but I was disappointed at the lack of pictures outside of Knoxville. There's even an app for that (though, really, I shouldn't have been surprised).

Then I started to think that it could also be used to talk about other American cities. If you are talking about another American city (at least after the camera was more widely in use), why not see what that city looked like then, versus now? You can take a virtual field trip to the past! TeachingHistory.org even recommended using it for a virtual field trip to Independence Hall.

I will warn you, it is a little depressing to watch some of these interesting buildings become parking lots, but it does provide a great starting point for discussion about preservation.

For more great ideas of how to use this technology, check out TeachingHistory.org's blog entry about the site.

Posted by Ashleigh Oatts - 08/07/2012, 03:01 PM