Children's Lives at Colonial London Town

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Screencap, Children's Lives at Colonial London Town
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Children's Lives at Colonial London Town tells the stories of three 18th-century families who lived in the port town of London Town, MD. Funded by a Teaching American History (TAH) grant, Anne Arundel County Public School teachers created this interactive online storybook and complementary app in partnership with the Center for History Education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Historic London Town and Gardens.

The storybook includes a three-chapter narrative exploring the lives of the Pierponts, a four-child, single-mother family running an ordinary (a public house) in 1709; the Hills, a middle-class young Quaker couple raising Mrs. Hill's five young siblings in 1739; and the Browns, 1762 tavernkeepers who owned several slaves, among them seven-year-old Jacob. Introductory sections explore the pre-colonial lives of Native peoples and the early days of colonization.

Each of more than 40 pages features images of primary sources, photographs of reenactors, and two to three paragraphs describing the everyday lives of these families. The stories look at how both parents and children (including enslaved children) ate, slept, dressed, worked, learned, played, and attended to their health. Questions throughout the text ask students to consider the information they read and develop questions about the past. Highlighted names and vocabulary invite readers to click to visit a glossary.

A slideshow gallery of images used in the storybook, an interactive map showing the locations of the three families' homes, and a timeline of events of both national and local London Town events from 1600 to 1800 support the storybook. Clicking on highlighted names and terms on the timeline takes visitors to related primary sources and articles off-site.

But how to use the storybook in the classroom? An Educators section orients teachers to the storybook and its supporting materials. A guide outlines the purpose and structure of the storybook, while the "Educator Resource" section offers more than 10 downloadable lesson plans and activities for 4th- through 5th-graders. Teachers can also review pre-reading and during-reading strategies for using the storybook, as well as strategies for writing prompted by it. Teachers can also follow links to sections of the Historic London Town and Gardens' website, including a 300-word introduction to London Town's history and information on London Town school tours.

To learn more about subjects covered in the storybook and to explore the sources that went into making it, see "Additional Websites and Places of Interest" for more than 25 links to websites focusing on Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania history and "Sources Used to Create This Book" for a bibliography of more than 30 books, primary sources, and websites.

A window into history tailored specifically for upper-elementary students, Children's Lives at Colonial London Town could make a compelling whiteboard read-along activity for teachers covering the colonial era. For students and teachers with smartphones and tablets, try the free app version and let students explore at their own pace.

OurStory

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Illustration, Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers, 2009, Karen B. Winnick
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In partnership with the National Center for Family Literacy, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History shares its work in linking literature, history, and hands-on learning on this site. A spin-off of programs presented in the museum, OurStory highlights 18 notable children's fiction and nonfiction books, including Ken Mochizuki's Baseball Saved Us, Doreen Rappaport's Martin's Big Words, and Peter and Connie Roop's Keep the Lights Burning, Annie.

The site summarizes each book and offers parents and teachers a downloadable reading guide, including vocabulary; pre-, during, and post-reading activities; descriptions and images of Smithsonian artifacts related to the text or illustrations; and related NCHS History Standards. Downloadable activity guides, outlining activities such as making a Jailed for Freedom suffragist's pin or roleplaying contemporary debate on the March on Washington, also accompany each book summary.

Visitors may browse the featured books by time period, and the activity guides by activity type. In addition, visitors may search a database of 290 fiction and nonfiction books for young people by title, author, topic, age group, book type (fiction or nonfiction), and awards (Caldecott Medal, Newberry Medal, Coretta Scott King Award, Golden Kite Award, or Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award). Resulting entries are sparse, offering only a one-sentence summary and basic facts about the book, but teachers may still find the database useful if they're actively in search of tested titles for teaching U.S. history.

Finally, visitors can find basic suggestions on where to look locally for field trip destinations under "Field Trips."

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.

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.

Emma Goldman Papers

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Image for Emma Goldman Papers
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Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was a major figure in the radical and feminist movements in the United States prior to her deportation in 1919. This collection of primary resources includes selections from four books by Goldman as well as 18 published essays and pamphlets, four speeches, 49 letters, and five newspaper accounts of Goldman's activities.

There are also nearly 40 photographs, illustrations, and facsimiles of documents. Additional items include two biographical exhibitions, selections from a published guide of documentary sources, and four sample documents from the book edition of her papers. A curriculum for students is designed to aid the study of freedom of expression, women's rights, anti-militarism, and social change. The site offers essays on the project's history and bibliographic references as well as links to other websites.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online

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This interactive case study explores the 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard and the construction of two late 20th-century historical studies based on the diary: historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book A Midwife's Tale and Laurie Kahn-Leavitt's PBS film by the same name.

The site provides facsimile and transcribed full-text versions of the 1,400-page diary. An archive offers images of more than 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. Also included are five maps, present-day images of Augusta and Hallowell, ME, and a timeline tracing Maine's history, the history of science and medicine, and a history of Ballard and Hallowell. The site offers suggestions on using primary sources to conduct research, including essays on reading 18th-century writing and probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. A bibliography offers nearly 150 scholarly works and nearly 50 websites.

Clio Visualizing History

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Glass plate, Lowell Thomas, Afghanistan, 1923, Marist College
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This website provides free access to a variety of visual materials and "seeks to illustrate the unique role of visual images in American history." Clio is an educational organization developing American history projects with appeal to a wide audience, including students, educators, and researchers. This site aims to not only provide access to a variety of visual historical materials, such as photographs, illustrations, and material objects (namely quilts), but also "to promote visual literacy by exploring the variety of ways that images enhance our understanding of the past and challenge us to hone our interpretive skills."

The website is organized into three main sections. The first, "Visualizing America," includes two collections of modules, titled "Picturing the Past: Illustrated Histories and the American Imagination, 1840–1900," and "Quilts as Visual History." A second section, ”Photography Exhibits," includes three photography collections: one focusing on the work of Frances Benjamin Johnston, another on the work of the Allen Sisters (Mary and Frances Allen), and the Peter Palmquist Gallery. A third section, "Creating History," examines the figure of Lowell Thomas, who became one of America's best known journalists, as well as the media version and reality of Lawrence of Arabia.

An additional section concerning women's history and lives in the 21st century and second half of the 20th century is planned for 2013.

A valuable website to students and researchers alike, it suffers only slightly from a lack of search capabilities.

Archives of American Art, Oral History Collections jmccartney Wed, 10/07/2009 - 14:53
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Logo, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
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This archive offers more than 180 transcriptions of oral history interviews with a variety of artists, including Louise Nevelson, Robert Indiana, Richard Diebenkorn, and Rube Goldberg. Many of the interviews involved artists who were active in the Works Projects Administration Artist Projects, and took place as part of the "New Deal and the Arts Oral History Program" in the 1960s. Each interview is accompanied by notes on the date and place of the interview and the name of the interviewer. These full-text transcriptions are useful for those interested in specific artists and their lives, but because the site has no search engine and there are no introductory notes or biographical information for the artists other than the information included in the interviews, the site is somewhat difficult to navigate.

Annie Oakley

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Photo, Annie Oakley
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Born Phoebe Ann Moses in 1860 in rural Ohio, Annie Oakley became one of the most famous female entertainers of her day, performing for many years with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Her life spanned a time of dramatic cultural change in the United States, and some of the most important years of the women's movement. This website accompanies a film on Oakley's life and work. While offering only a few primary sources, the website is rich with secondary source documentation. Users unfamiliar with Oakley's story may want to begin with the extensive timeline of her life, which traces her early years on a poor farm in Ohio, her involvement with the Wild West Show in the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s, the libel lawsuits she filed against 55 newspapers in the early 1900s, and her later years teaching women to shoot and raising funds for World War I.

The website includes profiles of 10 major people and events in Oakley's life, illustrated with thumbnail-sized photographs, as well as more extensive information on the Wild West Show's stints in New York City in the mid-1880s, including transcriptions from New York newspapers describing the shows. A gallery of six posters from the Wild West Show showcases Oakley's fame as one of the greatest marksmen of her time. The website also includes a transcript of the film, with extensive commentary by scholars of Oakley's life.

Living Voices, Voces Vivas

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Introductory graphic, Living Voices
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Provides audio files of 40 Native Americans and Native Hawaiians talking about their diverse lives, experiences, histories, and traditions, with an emphasis on illuminating their present-day concerns and projects. Those interviewed come from Canada, Mexico, and Panama, in addition to various parts of the U.S., and include leaders of organizations dedicated to the preservation of indigenous traditions and languages, artists, writers, musicians, teachers, scientists, activists, tribal leaders, students, and scholars. Includes religious leaders, the head of a successful gaming establishment, an illusionist, and a former Miss Indian World. The site is divided into English- and Spanish-language sections. Each talk lasts from three to five minutes; some talks are translated into English or Spanish for the appropriate section.

Access to the interviews is provided in two ways: through a "flash site" to accommodate high-speed connections, and via an HTML site for those with slower modems. The latter site includes interview transcripts. Valuable for those studying the history of Native peoples and ways that past traditions are consciously preserved in present-day cultures.