Voice of America

Article Body

The Voice of America, the United States' first official international radio service, began airing in 1942, during WWII. Since then, the service has provided a global audience with "a consistently reliable and authoritative source of the news," according to the VOA website. Besides news features, VOA also covers cultural, informative, and educational broadcasts; and the service is provided in 45 languages.

If you are interested in U.S. media history, the first place you may want to look is at the VOA organizational history, which is broken down by period, or at the historical highlights timelines.

Maybe you'd like to listen in on some of the archived broadcasts? In actuality, this may be difficult, if your broadcast of interest isn't brand new or at least 12 years old. However, the VOA does provide information on where certain broadcasts can be accessed (the National Archives being key).

The VOA list of programs offers links to many of the organization's programs and radio frequencies, which could be an excellent way to simultaneously teach English as a Second Language and current events, if you yourself are bilingual.

Similarly, you can check out streaming and on demand radio and film webcasts. On the other hand, if you are teaching English as a Second Language, select Learn English, which provides English-language broadcasts specifically designed for English learners.

One of the most unique, and potentially useful, features of the site is a pronunciation guide. Not only does the site write out location, organization, and historical and recent politician's names phonetically, it also provides audio files. So, for example, if you're teaching anything involving China, you can be much more confident discussing Jiangxi, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, or Zhou Enlai in front of your class.

Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

Article Body

According to the Cooper-Hewitt website, "The Museum presents compelling perspectives on the impact of design on daily life through active educational and curatorial programming." Collections range across 24 centuries.

What is design, and what does it have to do with history? Simply put, design can be considered an intentional solution to a human problem. Want somewhere comfortable to sit? Maybe a chair should have a padded seat. So, again, where does history come into the picture? Back to the chair. Did you know that the average seat is much deeper than they used to be a century ago? What does that tell us? Were people smaller? Do we live in larger homes with more square footage to fill? Is it social, cultural, or biological?

Ok, so design can help us think about the past. What now? Your best bet, created just for teachers, would be the educator resources. This page has a plethora of tools, including 38 pages of lesson plans. These can be searched by subject and/or grade level. Here, you'll also find discussions to which you can contribute, or even begin your own.

So, what else is there? Try browsing the collection highlights. You can always ask students to pick an object, and then research its artistic and functional heritage. When was it made? By whom? When does it look like it was made? Why did the designer choose this "look"? How is it used? How does the design reflect the time it was created? If you're looking for inspiration, you might also look through the museum's YouTube channel for lectures.

Maybe you're in the NYC area. Then, consider a visit. Take a look at their student tours, calendar of events, and professional development opportunities. You may also want to let your students know about the museum's youth programs.

Peace Corps

Article Body

The Peace Corps has a three-fold mission. First and foremost, the organization sends volunteers to communities around the world which have requested assistance in creating sustainable solutions to real world problems. Second (and third, really), is an interest in increasing international understanding and friendship—of non-Americans for Americans and vice versa.

One of the most exciting options the Peace Corps offers educators is the World Wise Schools Correspondence Match program. The program permits educators to request a pen pal relationship with a Peace Corps volunteer in a region of the world and area of interest (agriculture, business, education, health, or environment) of their choosing. Maybe your students could discuss the lasting impact of the Vietnam War with a volunteer in Southeast Asia or how U.S. business history has altered life in China or Central America. This could also be an excellent way to introduce social studies students to the connection between history and geography and fields more often taught at the collegiate level, such as anthropology and international relations.

Another feature offered is a collection of more than 120 lesson plans. These are not focused on history per se, but you may be able to find a lesson which will strengthen themes you are pursuing in the classroom. One such lesson involves planning a service learning project. Oral histories are a classic way to combine service learning and history.

Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia

Image
Annotation

This site incorporates 679 excerpts from original sound recordings and more than 1200 photographs from the Library of Congress American Folklife Center's Coal River Folklife Project (1992-1999). These materials document traditional uses of mountains in southern West Virginia's Big Coal River Valley as common land for hunting, gardening, mining, and timbering. It includes interviews on native forest species, traditional harvesting, storytelling, river baptisms, and other special occasions celebrated in the valley's commons. Forty brief (approximately 500-word) interpretive texts outline the social, historical, economic, and cultural contexts of community life in the valley; eight maps and more than 150 photographs illustrate these community activities. Captions (roughly 25-word) describe the more than 1200 images contained on the site, which is keyword searchable and browsable by subject, geographic location, photograph title, and audio title. This site would be of interest to those researching rural American life and folkways.

The Aaron Copland Collection, ca. 1900-1990

Image
Annotation

Yet another fine production from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress, this site was created to celebrate the centennial of composer Aaron Copland's birth. The site offers a selection of over 1000 items and 5000 images drawn from over 400,000 items in the Copland Collection of the Library's Music Division. Items in the online exhibit include music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs spanning 1899-1981, but primarily drawn from the 1920s to 1950s. In addition to these items the site also includes a roughly 3000-word essay on Copland's life and works with 12 photographs of Copland and a timeline of the artist's life and accomplishments from his birth in 1900 to his death in 1990. Leonard Bernstein's 1000-word article on Copland from the 1970 High Fidelity/Musical America issue and five 300-word tributes to Copland on his 75th birthday, published in the 1975 Schwann-1 Record and Tape Guide are also included. Visitors may search the site by keyword or browse alphabetical listings of musical sketches, writings, correspondence, photographs, titles, and works. This is a useful site for students and teachers interested in the history of American music and the lives of American composers.

Promise of Gold Mountain: Tucson's Chinese Heritage

Image
Annotation

This is a collection of material about the history of Chinese-Americans in Tucson, Arizona. It is one of five sections in an exhibit about ethnic diversity in Tucson. The site includes four 600-1,200-word biographies of Chinese-Americans in Tucson. Chinese-American history in the Tucson area is discussed in three 600-word essays about the railroads, farming and small business, and the development of Chinatowns in Tucson. Highlighted text in each essay links to three to ten photos. There are seven video clips of interviews of 20 seconds to two and a half minutes with and about a Chinese-American woman who grew up in Tucson in the 1940s. A page of sources lists eight books and articles about Chinese settlement in the west. The site will be useful for research about Asian-Americans, the west, and ethnicity in general.

Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800

Image
Annotation

This subscription-only website presents an extensive archive of U.S. history documents, offering more than 36,000 items and 2.3 million pages on all aspects of 17th- and 18th-century American life. It is comprised of a range of publications helpful for researching social, cultural, intellectual, and religious history, as well as political and military history, including advertisements, almanacs, bibles, charters and by-laws, cookbooks, maps, narratives, novels, plays, poems, sermons, songs, textbooks, and travelogues. It is especially useful for the history of printing, as it contains an exhaustive list of printers, booksellers, and publishers active in this time period as well as images and the full-text of most of the books, pamphlets, and broadsides they helped create.

Users can browse the imprints by category: Genre, Subjects, Author, History of Printing, Place of Publication, and Language. Simple and advanced searches are available, enabling easy access into this large collection of documents. For those with access, this site provides an extensive resource for researching all aspects of 17th- and 18th-century North America.

Photographer to the World-The Detroit Publishing Company

Image
Annotation

Based on an exhibit of the same name, this website provides a look at the Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) photographs of the Western United States from 1895 to 1924. The site is arranged for easy browsing into nine sections: DPC History, "How did they do it?," Cityscapes, Everyday Life, Foreign Views, Getting Around, Michigan Views, Nature, and Workplace; and each section contains 24 to 38 photographs. The first section covers the early years of the company and provides information about DPC photographers and the creation and distribution of pictures. The everyday life photos include images of cowboys shooting craps, children in Chinatown, and an African American Emancipation Day celebration in Richmond, VA. The foreign views section consists of snapshots taken in Mexico, Venezuela, the Bahamas, and Switzerland. Roughly 40 photographs focus on the state of Michigan. The nature images, the most popular of the company's photographs, are majestic and many of them fed the growing tourist industry. The section of workplace images rounds out this site and includes harvest scenes, loggers in Michigan, smelters, oyster pickers in Louisiana, and cotton gin workers. For those interested in the history of photography, this easily navigable site is a valuable resource.

The Perilous Fight: America's World War II in Color

Image
Annotation

A complement to the four-hour PBS television series, this site presents unseen footage of World War II, the first war recorded primarily on color film. It brings the wartime experience of Americans on the battlefield and home front vividly to life through original color film clips and photographs. The site is divided into four main areas, including Battlefield, Psychology of War, the Home Front, and Social Aspects. Each section allows visitors to navigate through the different subtopics, read excerpts from diaries and letters, view nearly 250 photographs available for the first time, and watch rare color film clips of the period.

"Battlefield" includes homage to Pearl Harbor as well as film footage of covert American operations. "Psychology of War" contains a section entitled "The Atomic Option" that presents a video montage of images of an atomic bomb dropping on Nagasaki, Japan. Within this section, there is also a video of a Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. "Homefront" includes five subsections, including censorship and migration. "Social Aspects" includes African Americans, Asians, Women, and Anti-Semitism. The footage of German American youth in New Jersey in the 1940s marching with fascist flags is very compelling. Visitors will also find an interactive timeline, essays on rediscovering the film footage, and a teaching guide for educators Those interested in this unforgettable period of history will find this site instructive.

Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WW II Arkansas

Image
Annotation

This compelling, well-designed site offers a rare glimpse into the World War II experiences of Japanese Americans in two Arkansas internment camps. A series of 30 photographs illuminates the daily lives of inmates at school, in a clinic, working at a sawmill. Physical conditions in the camp are captured effectively by several aerial views. Three QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) images that allow for 360-degree ground-level views are equally impressive. These photographs are supported by an in-depth timeline of events, an interactive map, and an extensive education section providing links to resources hosted by other sites.