Internet Moving Images Archive

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Screencapture, Duck and Cover, U.S. Federal Civil Defense Ad., 1951, Moving...
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These resources come from a privately held collection of 20th-century American ephemeral films, produced for specific purposes and not intended for long-term survival. The website contains nearly 2,000 high-quality digital video files documenting various aspects of 20th-century American culture, society, leisure, history, industry, technology, and landscape. It includes films produced between 1927 and 1987 by and for U.S. corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. More than 80 films address Cold War issues.

Films depict ordinary people in normal daily activities such as working, dishwashing, driving, and learning proper behavior, in addition to treating such subjects as education, health, immigration, nuclear energy, social issues, and religion. The site contains an index of 403 categories. This is an important source for studying business history, advertising, cinema studies, the Cold War, and 20th-century American cultural history.

Anacostia Community Museum

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The Anacostia Community Museum is one of the nation's Smithsonian museums. According to the museum website, it exists to "to challenge perceptions, broaden perspectives, generate new knowledge, and deepen understanding about the ever-changing concepts and realities of "community.'" Initial goals focused on African American history. However, as of now, the museum endeavors to represent the concept of community from the local to international levels.

In nearly all cases on the website, content loads at the very bottom of the page, so be sure to scroll down.

For those of you not in the DC area, the museum provides two activities—collections search and online exhibits. The exhibit on Adam Francis Plummer, a slave in Maryland, is particularly of note. The exhibit includes a downloadable PDF file of Plummer's diary; essays on the Plummer family and slavery in Maryland; a glossary; and guided reading and worksheets intended for middle and high school students. "Speak to My Heart: Communities of Faith and Contemporary African American Life" includes a series of oral history transcripts.

Naturally, this being a museum, a field trip would be an optimal way to take advantage of the organization's offerings. Take a look at the museum's group tour information, current programs, and library.

National Postal Museum

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The National Postal Museum is a Smithsonian museum dedicated to sharing the United States' mail communications history.

In the days of e-mail, facebook, Skype, and AOL messaging, the "snail mail" may seem obsolete to many of your students, short of receiving orders purchased online. However, if you can get them to consider what it may have been like to wait weeks, months, or years for the tiniest bits of information from another place, you will be appealing to their historical imagination.

Luckily for those not near DC, the postal museum has a strong online presence, so you don't have to visit to reap the benefits of the institution's offerings. For example, the site offers more than 15 online exhibits, ranging in topic from experimental delivery of mail by missile or stamp art to original war letters or the postal clerks aboard the Titanic. The museum's physical exhibits are also highlighted online, displaying major artifacts and primary sources from the Washington, DC, exhibits. These cover the early mail system, mail and the expanding population, postal transportation, personal communications, and stamps.

Similar resources include an Object of the Month feature and the online collections database, which can conveniently be divided into stamps and other postal artifacts.

The museum provides more than nine free curriculum guides, one of which is even designed for use specifically in ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms.

Other resources easily adaptable to class activities are a "how to" guide for stamp collecting and a site on stamps from ancestral homelands. The latter encourages users to share their own family and stamp stories. Consider asking students to find a stamp from one of their ancestral countries in the collections, and to discover how the image on it relates to that country's history and to that of the U.S.

Other options worth your time include the museum's videos, state-by-state contact information for postal history experts, finding guides for specific collections, online games, and a feature for creating your own stationary.

Of course, if you live in the DC area, you might be able to take your students on a field trip. The museum also offers a library, if your interest is piqued.

Federal Highway Administration

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The Federal Highway Administration is a division of the Department of Transportation. The administration's overall goal, according to their website, is to "improve mobility on our nation's highways." Priorities include reduction of traffic congestion, environmental awareness, and roadway safety.

The primary feature of FHWA web resources available to educators is a wide variety of statistical data. Using the information offered will require preparation, as lessons or activities will need to be built around the offered information. Possibilities include asking your students to look at older and recent statistics and make suggestions for the differences between the two data sets. How has U.S. daily life and technology changed in ways which support altered transportation trends?

Two sources which would be optimal for the above suggested activity include Traffic Volume Trends, which date from 1970 through 2009, and the National Household Travel Survey. The latter includes vehicle occupancy, public transportation availability, household travel, mode of transportation, characteristics of drivers with licenses, and more. The years covered are 1969, 1977, 1983, 1990, 1995, and 2001.

Other options exist to find articles and data which fit your classroom's needs. These include the National Transportation Library, the FHWA's Publications and Products page, and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Admiral Television

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From the Kansas State Historical Society website:

"Developed in Europe during the 1920s, television quickly spread around the world. Its first appearance in Delia, Kansas, came in 1949 when the Rosser family purchased this Admiral home entertainment system."

Mudtown Doll

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From the Kansas State Historical Society website:

"A decade before the end of segregation, a kind woman and a little girl broke through racial barriers in Topeka. This handmade African American doll symbolizes a bond between whites and blacks in the Mudtown neighborhood during the 1940s."

Texting With the Dead

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From the Kansas State Historical Society website:

"Imagine a world in which the living commune with the dead. Most people today find that a bizarre concept, but 100 years ago it was a fun pastime for the Wichita family who used this Ouija board.

Behind-the-scenes: Staff members describe creepy artifacts in our collection."

Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

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In this podcast from the Kansas Museum of History, the curators examine a classic folly in the world of exercise equipment: the belt vibrator. The podcast also includes an overview of the history of the creation of the machine and a brief discussion of its usefulness as a weight-loss device.

We Go Pogo!

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From the Kansas State Historical Society website:

"One of the most popular syndicated comic strips in the mid-20th century was Walt Kelly's "Pogo." It offered a satirical take on society and politics. This original strip from 1954 introduced readers to a mythical Kansas bird, the Jayhawk."

Count Me In

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In this podcast by the Kansas Museum of History, the curators examine a satchel that once belonged to Census Taker John Bissell. The podcast also discusses the procedure for census recording in the early 20th century and how it has evolved into our modern mail-in census form.