Shirley Chisolm, the first African American woman elected to Congress and the first woman to run for president of the United States in 1972, once stated, "Of my two 'handicaps,' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black."

It's perhaps a surprising point of view—but in light of the recent presidential election, perhaps not. The election brought both race and gender to the forefront, often on waves of euphoria pushed by hope that the nation has moved a long way beyond a culture of discrimination. But how far have we actually come, and how much farther do we need to go? Women's History Month in March, following on the heels of Black History Month, is a chance to examine the trajectory and distance of that progress. One question for teachers is how integrate this narrative into the curriculum.

Educators and historians question the value of isolating women's history—and African American history—by focusing on "firsts" or on prominent individuals—and by limiting this focus to one month a year. "Women's history exists always within the context of universal history," wrote historian Gilda Lerner. "[It] takes place within the context of the political and social life shared by men and women."

The resources below, while focusing on women, demonstrate that integration into the greater narrative of American and global history. They represent only a sample of available materials.

A new book, Clio in the Classroom: A Guide to Teaching U.S. Women's History, edited by Carol Berkin, Margaret S. Crocco, and Barbara Winslow, (Oxford University Press, 2009) is central to the discussion of the place of women's history in the curriculum. Their goal, the editors explain, is to consider how to integrate women's history "into the traditional American history narrative." Clio in the Classroom approaches their goal in three categories: up-to-date overviews of American women's history divided into eras from colonial to the present; conceptualization of the issues in women's history; and approaches and materials for incorporating women's voices into the curriculum. An essay on applying the historical thinking process to women's history and a rich compendium of resources are part of the volume.

Women's History: a Quick Cyberguide, by Arnold Pulda on AP Central on the College Board website, addresses how to include women's history in the AP U.S. history course. "We may not have, say, two weeks to focus exclusively on women's history," Pulda writes, "but we do have 40 weeks to make sure that students take notice of the threads that make up the entire strand as we progress along its length, and to pay attention when that thread is more or less prominent in the whole, and why."

Links below lead to a few of the reviews and websites on women's history included in the Clearinghouse database of website reviews.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Jewish Women's Archives
Emma Goldman Papers
Kate and Sue McBeth: Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce
Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848–1921
Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889–1963

Teaching with images? The National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian hosts an online Flash exhibit, Women Of Our Time. The exhibit includes three sections: Gallery, Biographical Moments, and Styles Gallery summarizes women's advances and looks at notable women of achievement in business, politics, social movements, and entertainment. Biographical Moments includes a curator's explanation of the role of portraiture in documenting a life, providing insights into interpreting portrait photographs. Styles explores the work of individual photographers, including Edward Steichen and Louise Dahl Wolfe and places their work within the photographic conventions of their times.

The Organization of American Historians hosts the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites, and the National Park Service itemizes lesson plans related to teaching women's history through historic sites through models diversified by race, geography, and time period.

Women's History Teaching Resources from the Smithsonian categorizes resources on women's history by race and ethnicity, professions, and events.

A YouTube series, Facts on Congress, includes a one-minute quick quiz on Women in Congress.

A search on the History Channel under video using the search term women yields audio and video files lasting 30 seconds to four minutes. Some are commentary: Maya Angelou tackles gender and race through comments about the Women's Movement and her memories of Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks. Some are historic footage: a newsclip from 1943 celebrates the first birthday of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, the predecessor of the Women's Army Corps. This video is both a primary and secondary source—it reveals multiple perspectives on contemporary attitudes toward women. (Brief commercial messages accompany many History Channel videos.)

A search through the P.O.V Blog (Point of View) on PBS provides lists of documentaries, including Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed. The film is available through Netflix. The PBS site includes lesson plans and additional resources.

Also on PBS, the American Experience series offers a film on Woodrow Wilson. A full transcript of the program is available online, and the accompanying teachers guide offers a lesson on Women's Suffrage for grades 7–12. The lesson begins by pointing out that Wilson's first wife did not have the right to vote for her husband and branches from there into a look at phases of the women's suffrage movement, obstacles, and the Wilson administration's stance on women's suffrage.

American Women's History: A Research Guide, a resource from the Middle Tennessee State University Library, is an extensive gateway to collections of women's history resources—print, media, and digitized primary sources—grouped under 75 alphabetized topics ranging from abolitionists to writers to Hispanic Americans, philanthropists, sports, and work.

The Library of Congress window on materials about women's history, Women's History Month, leads to a wealth of materials recognizing "the creativity, imagination, and vitality of women throughout U.S. history." Materials still available from 2008 emphasized the theme Women's Art, Women's Vision.

At the Library of Congress, see also "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850–1920

Pathfinder for Women's History at the National Archives systematizes the hunt for resources through defined categories of Primary Documents, Monographs and Anthologies, and Reference Works.

For primary source documents, see Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment on the National Archives site.

A 12th-grade curriculum module from Annenberg Media, titled Gender-based Distinctions, analyzes the question, "When does the government have the right to treat men and women differently?" Students debate gender discrimination laws. Title IX, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1972 Amendments, and court cases are among examined materials. A video demonstrates classroom implementation of the lesson plan. Annenberg requires a login; online materials are free of charge.

Also from Annenberg: The Lowell System: Women in a New Industrial Society, Workshop Three of Primary Sources: Workshops in American History, illustrates through primary source documents just how much industrialization changed the lives of women. Documents, activities, videos, and lecture transcripts are available on the website.

And Annenberg recommends Remember the Ladies, correspondence between Abigail Adams and her husband, John Adams, in 1776, and speeches by Sojourner Truth, on the website for America's History in the Making. Also see the program Industrializing America to trace the developments leading to women's entry into the workforce en masse.

The Women In World History website includes a resource page, Teaching Women's Rights from Past to Present. Resources include lesson plans, links to primary source documents and analysis, and an emphasis on law and policy demonstrating a formal extension of women's rights.

In 2007, Scholastic Magazine asked filmmaker Anne Aghion about Women's History Month. Her response: it made her sad that Women's History Month was even needed, but, "The truth is, women still have to work harder than men do to succeed in certain professions." Scholastic's activities for students grades 5–8 include Women's Suffrage, a unit including interactive maps and quizzes and the stories of one woman who remembered casting her first vote in 1920.

PBS Kids offers a contextualized essay on Alice Paul and the National Women's Party.

Women In Congress a rich website of the Office of the Clerk, U.S. Capitol, includes historical essays, artifacts, fast facts, and educational resources—including seven lesson plans.

The best way to use video in teaching history is short student-created segments for direct instruction. This post discusses what a group of teachers at the Education Study Group found works best for at-risk populations.

At my school, the figures are dismal: On the first day of school, you look at 23 students. Seventeen didn't eat breakfast at home, 16 struggle with English, five are designated Special Needs. On the last day of school, you still have 23, but nine of the faces changed without warning at some time during the year, due to high student mobility.

I'm not making excuses. To not acknowledge these hard facts would be educational malfeasance. It's where you start—with the student. Untangling these elementary students and teaching them to be lifelong learners of history is the goal, all the while striving to ensure they get what they need to pass NCLB requirements. In this environment, the correct use of video can be a lifesaver. In general, a large percentage of at-risk kids learn visually, in short bursts which can be repeated, at will. The Internet and digital video have made this a wonderful option.

When a short (two- to five-minute) video is played in class, we (the Education Study Group) recorded the highest student attention. Use a clip six to eight times in one lesson, and one gets the same attention numbers. This works with video clips from “expert” sources such as Discovery Education and some YouTube and TeacherTube videos, but the attention is heightened if the videos are created by students.

Our research found this is the best time to provide direct instruction. After the facts have been downloaded into your students' brains in this manner, then the discussion, examples, and inferences can be accomplished more easily.

If the same videos are put online where they can be accessed by the students, those who need to review can repeat the videos over and over. When the direct instruction video is played it triggers the ancillary information provided in class. Conversely, if the videos are of ancillary information and the direct instruction was provided via lecture, less is recalled by review of the videos.

Knowing the critical information is in the videos and online allows students to watch and interact in class, rather than take notes—an important element for success in at-risk populations.

Having students construct their own learning of history by building a video is great stuff, but many teachers do it backwards. They teach their regular lesson (lots of words, worksheets, and note taking) and then do something with technology as a "synthesizing" activity. That's not where technology goes. The research of Sugata Mitra and his "Hole in the Wall" experiment showed us that students should work in teams when using technology. In his experiment he placed computers throughout different remote regions of India and children were able to teach themselves to use the equipment, in small groups, without any external instruction. It is the research on which the global “one laptop per child” initiative is based.

In our research, we’ve taken that model and applied it using authentic publishing. We define "authentic publishing" simply by the fact that, once content is published, it can be Googled. There is a palpable difference in a student’s incentives when what they publish can be seen by a massive audience outside their classroom. When publishing information about U.S. history, for a project on the American Revolution for example, students (even very young students) get the added responsibility that people in the United Kingdom will actually be able to read what they write. They take care not to offend their audience. They understand they will be judged against everything out on the Internet, not just against their classmates' or teacher’s expectations. It energizes their writing, and spurs broader research.

Most important, it is completely self-initiated. Students review one another’s work without being directed to do so. They comment on one another’s work using the available tools (almost all online technologies have a comments feature). They learn from one another, and in the process of creation of the project, take those lessons and adapt and apply them to their own work. This collaborative learning is done, for the most part, without it being assigned, or even encouraged (though we do suggest teachers encourage this behavior).

We've done research over the past three years on how students use media at home. We find if they make it and publish it authentically, they review it repeatedly in production, and then at home with friends and family. We've found students watch their own media 25 or 50 times. And they repeatedly watch the media produced by other students in the class.

In one example, students were given a page to complete in a subject-specific wiki. They were shown the tools and allowed to use whichever media they wished. They worked in teams to accomplish their goals, even though they each had a separate page. The assignment was classical, with a standard rubric that could be used for any writing assignment. Teachers didn’t need to change the assignment parameters from what they would have assigned for a paper and pencil version. It was the medium which changed the paradigm.

What was most telling was students' activity at home. To a student, they would go home and review their page. They would show it to their brothers, their sisters, their friends, and parents. They would then look at the pages of each of the other students in their class. Then they would come in the next day and say something to the effect of, "I've got some new ideas on how to make my page better. Are we going to work on the wiki today?"

This example was a second-grade class with predominately special needs. Imagine the same activity, with worksheets. "A student goes home and reviews their worksheet, shows it to their siblings, friends, and parents. Then reviews the worksheet for everyone else in their class." It would never happen.

On the first day of spring break, it rained. Two students published videos on their pages that day. It's the power of publishing—authentic (Google-able) publishing—which provides the incentive, the power to this learning engine.

Our research illustrates students should construct their own visual media, developing parts of the direct instruction for the lesson. If they publish it authentically, they are motivated to excel due to a larger audience of peers and through competition with classmates. And they voluntarily review the material repeatedly.