Teaching History Online
Number 11: 1st October, 2001
Introduction
Spartacus Educational publishes Teaching History Online every month. The newsletter will include news, reviews of websites and articles on using ICT in the history classroom. Members of the mailing list are invited to submit information for inclusion in future editions of Teaching History Online. In this way we hope to create a community of people involved in using the Internet to teach history.
John Simkin
A History of Flight: The Science Museum's On-Line Exhibition starts with a timeline of the History of Flight. The user can use this as a base to explore both the aircraft and the people involved in the development of the industry. Thirty-one people have been chosen and they range from King Louis XIV, who witnessed the early flight of the Montgolfier balloon, to Bill Bedford, the test pilot of the first vertical and landing jet areoplane. There are a large number of aircraft on display. This usually includes a photograph, background information on its development and technical details (span, length, weight, speed, power and armament).
Vietnam Veterans: The purpose of Bill McBride's website is to "honour Vietnam veterans, living and dead, who served their country on either side of the conflict". Bill McBride's excellent website provides "an interactive, on-line forum for Vietnam veterans and their families and friends to exchange information, stories, poems, songs, art, pictures, and experiences in any publishable form." There is also a link to Bill McBride's other important Vietnam website Remembrance: Reflections, Memories and Images of Vietnam Past.
The Penny Magazine: Charles Knight of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge believed that a literate working class created a potentially dangerous situation. He wrote in 1828 that this "could not be stopped although
it might be given direction." Knight's answer to this problem was to publish the Penny Magazine. It was not long before Knight was selling 200,000 copies a week. This website intends to republish past editions of this magazine. It is very attractively designed and easy to navigate and provides a fascinating insight into Britain in the 1830s.
The Gunpowder Plot: A website produced by the Centre for Fawkesian Pursuits. The story of the plot is told in six parts. Each section is accompanied by music of the period. The main strength of this site is the way it provides background information on a whole range of topics linked to the central topic. This includes food, clothes, music, culture and language. The website also explores relevant concepts such as political violence and includes a section on Terrorism in History.
The Irish Famine: A comprehensive study of how the the Irish Famine changed the social and cultural structure of Ireland. Liz Szabo's archive provides a series of interpretations of the famine that appeared in newspapers, diaries and novels at the time. This material can be explored in a variety of different ways. The primary sources are categorized by topics (hunger and disease, eviction, emigration, homelessness, etc.) and types of sources (newspaper accounts, photographs, drawings, etc.). The main emphasis of the website is on the different interpretations of the Irish Famine. The primary sources are also organized under the headings: 'Voices from Ireland', 'Irish-American Commentary' and 'English Views of the Famine'.
The Rainhill Trials: In October 1829 the directors of the soon to be completed Liverpool and Manchester Railway held a competition to find the most appropriate locomotive to use on their railway. The Rainhill Trials, as the competition came to be known, were held over a number of weeks. Grandstands were erected and many people came to watch the events. The correspondent from the weekly Mechanics Magazine, attended these trials and sent detailed verbatim reports of the events. This website contains those articles and illustrations of the five locomotives involved: Novelty, Rocket, Sans Pareil, Cycloped and Perseverance.
U-boat War 1939-1945: This website contains over 12,700 pages of information on the U-boat War. This includes biographies of 1,411 U-boat commanders and profiles of 1153 U-boats. Recent articles added include U-boat Shipyards, U-boat Types, Donitz at Nuremberg, Sinking of SS Athenia, German Saboteur Teams in the USA, U-boat Songs, Men Lost from U-boats, German Torpedo Crisis, Operation Deadlight, Convoy Commodores and U-boat Computer Simulations.
Please email John Simkin at spartacus@pavilion.co.uk if you have information you want included in next month's edition of Teaching History Online.
