Prohibition: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick

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Screencapture, Prohibition homepage
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This website provides a light introduction to the history of Prohibition in the United States, reinforced with videos and images from the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary from PBS. The website showcases a photo gallery and biographies on figures from the time period paired with clips from the full-length documentary. The website also includes a map and timeline function for visualizing Prohibition efforts across space and time, as well as more than 10 lesson plans and activity resources for educators.

The website is relatively easy to navigate. The photo gallery contains more than 70 images of individuals, newspaper articles, and events, coupled with brief descriptions. More than 30 brief videos, pulled from the larger documentary, are scattered throughout the website. (Note: the video content is not transcribed or captioned.) Another useful feature may be the map, which enables visitors to get a sense of the geographical relationship of events and figures, or the timeline, which visualizes the sequence of events. Students may also be encouraged to examine one of the more than 20 biographies: brief descriptions paired with videos that provide a more in-depth discussion of the individual.

Educators should direct their attention to the For Educators section. This page provides access to four prepared lesson plans and nine quick "snapshot activities" intended to work in conjunction with website and documentary materials. These activities can be modified and integrated into larger units in coursework on these subjects. Given the graphic nature of some photos on the site and the available subject content, teachers may want to reserve the website for students grades eight and higher.

History Hitting Home: Children's History, Local History, and Digital Storytelling

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Photo, Children playing on the street..., Edwin Rosskam, 1941, LoC
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How do you connect history to students' own lives? Do you introduce them to the lives of children in the past? Explore local history with them? Let them recount history themselves using digital storytelling tools? Try combining two of these techniques—or all three—to give your students a sense of ownership over history.

Often, textbooks skim over or omit the stories of young people in the past. How did they live? What did they wear and eat? How did they play? What kind of work did they do? How did they learn? Seek out primary and secondary sources that explore the rich details of children's lives in the past. Some websites focus on children's history. Try:

(Choose topic "Children" and search our Website Reviews for more. Search "Children" in our general search to find resources like Beyond the Textbook primary sources on girls' lives in the Progressive era.)

Textbooks also omit local history. Where did children play, learn, and work in the past in your area? How might you and your students connect with that past? Teachinghistory.org's Daisy Martin suggests trying local museums, historic sites, and libraries. High school teacher Roseanne Lichatin has had good luck connecting students with volunteer opportunities at local history museums.

But what about digital media and tools? How can you combine those with children's and local history? With the help of a still or video camera and digital storytelling tools, your students can recreate stories from your local past. For inspiration, check out our feature on the Of the Student, By the Student, For the Student project, a program of The Journey Through Hallowed Ground partnership. In this program, students visit local historic sites and write and film their own short documentaries or historical films "on location."

Remember that once students create materials such as these documentaries, you can use them, with students' permission, as teaching tools for future classes. Students often respond with enthusiasm to learning from and teaching their peers! The Journey Through Hallowed Ground's new lesson plans demonstrate ways to teach using student films. High school teacher James A. Percoco also taps into this energy by having his students guide the class around historic sites, and Elizabeth Glynn has her 11th-grade students create tours incorporating local monuments.

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.

George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin

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Filmmaker George Stevens, Jr., introduces and discusses D-Day to Berlin, the Emmy Award-winning documentary he made using color footage that his father, director George Stevens, filmed across Europe at the end of World War II. In 1943, Stevens, Sr., was assigned to follow the invasion of Normandy with the 6th Army for the purpose of recording their operations for army archives; the footage used to make up D-Day to Berlin was discovered after his death and follows Stevens and his crew as they follow the Allied Army.

Audio and video options are available.

On American Experience: Victory in the Pacific

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Filmmaker Austin Hoyt answers questions on his new documentary, American Experience: Victory in the Pacific, which examines the final year of World War II in the Pacific, including the rationale for using the atomic bomb, and features firsthand recollections of both American and Japanese civilians and soldiers. The presentation includes a collage of audio and visual clips from the film.

Audio and video options are available.

An Evening with Charles Hammond Gibson

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According to the WGBH website:

"Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. (1874-1954) was a Boston writer and bachelor bon vivant, best known for having preserved his family's Beacon Street home as a museum of Victorian style and taste. The Wounded Eros, a short documentary film by Todd Gernes, explores the aesthetic relationship between Gibson's literary production and the material culture contexts of his museum and library, set within the social history of turn-of-the-century gay Boston. Following the film, a dramatic reading, These Four Walls: A History of a Romantic Friendship, directed by Jacqueline Romeo and featuring John Anderson and Aleksander Feliks Wierzbicki, will extend the exploration of Gibson's life by depicting his enduring relationship with the eccentric self-styled "Count" Maurice de Mauny Talvande."

American Experience: Eyes on the Prize

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A panel discusses the documentary television series American Experience: Eyes on the Prize, which uses contemporary interviews and historical footage to follow the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1985, following a preview screening. The discussion focuses on the creation of the series and what its creators hoped to achieve.

An mp3 of the discussion audio is available for download.