VOCES Oral History Project

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Photo, Albert Jose Angel, VOCES Oral History Project
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VOCES (Spanish for "voices") began as the project of a University of Texas professor of journalism. Rivas-Rodriguez sought to record the stories of Latinas and Latinos who served during World War II. However, since 2010 the archives have expanded in scope, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to also include experiences from the Korean War and Vietnam War.

The majority of the interviews found on the site focus on veterans. However, civilian experiences are included as well. The "Stories" section can be browsed by name, war, city of birth, state of birth, and branch of service. A rather easy to overlook bar at the bottom of the page also permits you to find stories based on thematic content such as "citizenship" and "racism/discrimination." Each individual name is connected to a short narrative based on the individual's interview. These include direct quotations from the man or woman in question, but there is no transcript of the entire interview itself. You may also find photographs accompanying each story.

Maybe you would like your students to conduct similar interviews, particularly if no names are available from your home town. If so, be sure to visit "Learn to Interview." Here you can find a series of short videos describing the process of preparing for, conducting, and processing oral interviews. If you would like to provide an interview for the site, a downloadable PDF kit is available describing guidelines and containing the questionnaires used by the project.

Additional sections include "Resources" and "Publications." The former includes external links and an 85-page downloadable educator's guide, while the latter offers links to past VOCES newsletters and newspapers.

Cross-checking Sources and Testing Hypotheses

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In this 107-second video clip, we see a high school student checking his ideas against the available evidence. In reading a leaflet from the civil rights movement, he encounters a name from a previous document and assumes that she is a white civic leader. The second document, however, raises questions for him about the woman's position. Flipping back and forth between sources, he comes to a reasoned conclusion about who Jo Ann Robinson is and develops a more nuanced understanding of what the civil rights movement was like. The accompanying written commentary points out the clues that the student uses to inform his reading. Find the documents the student reads here (see "Robinson" and "Leaflet").

Portal to Texas History

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Postcard, postmarked October 9, 1907, Portal to Texas History
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This archive offers a collection of more than 900,000 photographs, maps, letters, documents, books, artifacts, and other items relating to all aspects of Texas history, from prehistory through the 20th century. Subjects include agriculture, arts and crafts, education, immigration, military and war, places, science and technology, sports and recreation, architecture, business and economics, government and law, literature, people, religion, social life and customs, and the Texas landscape and nature. Some subjects include sub-categories. For instance, social life and customs, with 694 items, includes 13 sub-categories, such as clothing, families, food and cooking, homes, slavery, and travel. The visitor can also search the collection by keyword.

Resources for educators include seven "primary source adventures," divided into 4th- and 7th-grade levels, with lesson plans, preparatory resources, student worksheets, and PowerPoint slideshows. Subjects of the lessons include Cabeza de Vaca, Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War, life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the journey of Coronado, the Mier Expedition, runaway slaves, the Shelby County Regulator Moderator war, and a comparison of Wichita and Comanche village life. This website offers useful resources for both researching and teaching the history of Texas.

Old Time Radio

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Promotional graphic, Flash Gordon
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This website features 85 selections from the "Golden Age of Radio," which lasted from the early 1920s until television replaced radio in many homes in the United States in the 1950s. Shows include original dramatic favorites such as Dragnet, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Sherlock Holmes, and the Radio Detective Story Hour, and adventure and western shows such as The Adventures of Superman, The Lone Ranger, and Batman Adventures. Other selections include shows discussing aspects of radio's Golden Age, and presenting clips from shows, such as Theater of the Mind and Yesterday's Radio, as well as shows devoted to music and radio soap operas. There are at least 10 episodes of each show available, and often more than 70. All shows can be streamed online, and many can be downloaded via an iTunes podcast. This website is now part of a larger website devoted to presenting more contemporary radio shows, some of which may not be appropriate for young audiences.

Missouri Digital Heritage

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Painting, Portrait of a Musician, Thomas Hart Benton, 1949
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This massive mega-website presents thousands of documents and images related to Missouri's social, political, and economic history, linking to collections housed at universities, libraries, and heritage sites across the state. These resources are organized both into archival collections (by topic and source type) and virtual exhibits.

Archival collections include maps, municipal records, government and political records, newspapers, photographs and images, books and diaries, as well as topical collections on agriculture, medicine, women, business, exploration and settlement, art and popular culture, and family, rendering the website's resources as useful for genealogists as for those interested in history.

Exhibits encompass a diverse range of subjects, and include topics of relevance to Missouri history (Miss Carrie Watkins's cookbook from the mid-19th century, several exhibits on life at the University of Missouri and Washington University, Truman's Whistle Stop campaign), and topics outside of Missouri (the body in Medieval manuscripts, Roman imperial coins, propaganda posters from World War II, and drawings documenting dinosaur discovery before the mid-20th century).

Teachers will be especially interested in the large Education section, which includes curricular resources on topics such as African Americans in Missouri, Lewis and Clark's Expedition, Missouri State Fairs, and the history of dueling.

History of American Education Web Project

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Introductory graphic, History of American Education Web Project
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Provides 55 images and 60 short essays, ranging in length from a few sentences to approximately 1,500 words, on significant topics in the history of American education. The essays were prepared by undergraduates and edited by their professor, Robert N. Barger, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of education. Organized into five chronological categories from the colonial era to the present, with an additional essay on European influences. Covers such topics as hornbooks, primers, McGuffey Reader's, normal schools, kindergarten, high school, African-American education, adult education, prayer in schools, student rights, and education of the handicapped. Includes essays on such personages as Freidrich Froebel, Herbert Spenser, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, Horace Mann, and G. Stanley Hall. Also offers information on recent topics such as the Committee on Excellence in Education's 1983 study, A Nation at Risk, and the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law in 1994. Professor Barger's warning that he did not add balance to the "triumphalist" perspective that some of his students adopted should be remembered by those using this site. Nevertheless, it provides a useful introduction to high school students and undergraduates studying the history of American education.

Florida State Archives Photographic Collection

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Image, Conch Town, WPA, C. Foster, 1939, Florida State Archives Photo Collection
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More than 137,000 photographs of Florida, many focusing on specific localities from the mid-19th century to the present, are available on this website. The collection, including 15 online exhibits, is searchable by subject, photographer, keyword, and date.

Materials include 35 collections on agriculture, the Seminole Indians, state political leaders, Jewish life, family life, postcards, and tourism among other things. Educational units address 17 topics, including the Seminoles, the Civil War in Florida, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, pioneer feminist Roxcy Bolton, the civil rights movement in Florida, and school busing during the 1970s.

"Writing Around Florida" includes ideas to foster appreciation of Florida's heritage. "Highlights of Florida History" presents 46 documents, images, and photographs from Florida's first Spanish period to the present. An interactive timeline presents materials—including audio and video files—on Florida at war, economics and agriculture, geography and the environment, government and politics, and state culture and history.

The Thomas Jefferson Building: Secret Messages

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In the Library of Congress online interactive The Thomas Jefferson Building: Secret Messages, students explore four locations in the oldest of the library's buildings. Built between 1890 and 1897, the Thomas Jefferson Building features art and architectural details that help communicate the building's purpose to visitors. Students discover details in each of the four locations and decide which of four themes they best symbolize: celebrating achievement, providing access to knowledge, inspiring creativity, and promoting progress and discovery. At the end of the activity, students choose from all of the details the one they thought best conveyed its theme, and describe a modern symbol they might use to convey the same idea. A brief Teacher Resources page suggests ways of incorporating the activity into curriculum, and a blog entry offers more ideas.

Buildings are a living record of human interaction with place. This interactive encourages students to analyze buildings as primary sources and consider the intent behind architectural details.

Disability History Museum

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Image, "The Polio Chronicle," Bolte Gibson, 1932, Disability History Museum
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This ongoing project was designed to present materials on the historical experiences of those with disabilities. The website currently presents nearly 800 documents and more than 930 still images dating from the late 18th century to the present.

Subjects are organized according to categories of advocacy, types of disability, government, institutions, medicine, organizations, private life, public life, and personal names. Documents include articles, poems, pamphlets, speeches, letters, book excerpts, and editorials.

Of special interest are documents from the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation Archives, including the Polio Chronicle, a journal published by patients at Warm Springs, Georgia, from 1931 to 1934. Images include photographs, paintings, postcards, lithographs, children's book illustrations, and 19th-century family photographs, as well as postcard views of institutions, beggars, charity events, and types of wheelchairs.