Teaching History Online
Number 119: 11th January, 2004
2. HistoryWorld
3. Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies
4. The Wisconsin Pioneer Experience
6. Calvin Shedd and the American Civil War
8. Ghosts Towns
Introduction
Spartacus Educational publishes Teaching History Online every week. The newsletter includes 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. Currently there are 33,580 subscribers to the newsletter.
John Simkin
Nationalism and History Teaching: Dalibor Svoboda was educated in Czechoslovakia. He points out that when he was at secondary school his textbooks claimed "that almost every achievement in human history was made by Russians". Dalibor argues that this was something experienced by every satellite country of Eastern Europe. However, it is not only under communist rule that nationalism distorts interpretations of the past. Juan Carlos Ocaña is concerned about Basque and Catalan nationalism in Spain. He claims that in Barcelona children are taught that the Spanish Civil War was a conflict in which Basques and Catalans fought against Spaniards. If you have an example of how nationalism distorts the past join the debate on the International Education Forum.
HistoryWorld is a highly interactive site in which users can move back and forth through time along interconnecting pathways. Timelines available include: The Neolithic Revolution, The Roman Empire, Europe in the time of Charlemagne, Crusades against Islam, Italian Renaissance, Exploration in the Early Modern Period, France at the time of the Sun King, French Revolution and Napoleonic Era, Revolutions of 1848, German and Italian Unification, European Imperialism in 19th Century Africa, The Phoenicians, Civilizations of Peru, Imperial China to Kublai Khan, Muhammad and Mecca, Japan under the Shoguns, West African Empires, Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the 16th Century, India under the Moghul Empire, Dutch Republic in the 17th Century, The Reign of Peter the Great, The Zulu Kingdoms, Partition of Ireland, Western Front in the First World War and the Rise of National Socialism in Germany.
Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies: Carolyn Schriber of Rhodes College started this website in 1995. The ORB Encyclopedia is a collection of chronological and geographical index of essays, bibliographies, images, documents, links, and other resources, selected by editors to illustrate their selected topics. Another feature is What Every Medievalist Should Know by James Marchand and Stephen Mark Carey. These 45 lists, arranged topically and alphabetically, comprise the premier guide to medieval studies. The ORB Reference Shelf provides links to excerpts and full texts from primary and secondary sources.
The Wisconsin Pioneer Experience is a digital collection of diaries, letters, reminiscences, speeches and other writings of people who settled and built Wisconsin during the 19th century. The project has been made available through the partnership of the Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries (CUWL) and the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS). Through these documents, students and non-students alike can learn about life in the early days of Wisconsin from the words of those who lived it. Whenever both a handwritten original and a typed transcribed version were available, the project scanned both versions. The electronic text can be searched and read by switching to the electronic text version in the page-turning software used to access the document. No editing was made to the electronic text, therefore the original should always be consulted before citing the text.
Animated Atlas portrays large chapters of history quickly by animating maps and geographic features. Although most of the videos must be ordered, the site provides free samples of its presentations. For example, Growth of a Nation is a ten minute movie which depicts the geographic history of the United States from the beginning of the nation to fifty states. Geographic elements are interactive, as is the timeline. Other movies include the early history of the American Revolution, the European alliances before the First World War, and the beginnings of the Mexican American War.
Calvin Shedd and the American Civil War: Calvin Shedd, a carpenter from New Hampshire, enlisted in the Seventh Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers and served the Union Army during the Civil War from 1862 - 1863. During this period Shedd wrote 53 letters to his wife and three young daughters about military life in Key West, Fort Jefferson and St. Augustine, Florida. These documents convey the extraordinary circumstances that life in the Union Army offered one New Hampshire solider during the early years of the Civil War. The website includes a biography of Shedd and photographs of people mentioned in the text.
After the Day of Infamy: On December 8, 1941 (the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor), Alan Lomax, then "assistant in charge" of the Archive of American Folk Song sent a telegram to fieldworkers in ten different localities across the United States, asking them to collect "man-on-the-street" reactions of ordinary Americans to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by the United States. A second series of interviews was recorded in January and February 1942. Both collections are included on this website. They feature a wide diversity of opinion concerning the war and other social and political issues of the day, such as racial prejudice and labour disputes. The result is a portrait of everyday life in America as the United States entered World War II.
Ghost Towns: Daniel Ter-Nedden and Carola Schibli are two photographers from Switzerland. However, they spend a great deal of time travelling in the United States. Their website contains over 1300 photographs of 174 ghost towns in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, California, and Arizona. Each ghost town entry includes photographs, short captions, and a brief history of the place. The website also provides a brief history of the Gold Rush. A clickable map allows users to search different geographical areas for individual ghost towns. You can purchase high-quality prints of different photographs featured on the site.
Book Section
Greek and Roman Artillery 399 BC–AD 363: The catapult (katapeltikon) was invented under the patronage of Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, in the 4th century BC. At first only the arrow-firing variant was used, and it was not until the reign of Alexander the Great that stone-projecting catapults were introduced. The Romans adopted these weapons during the Punic Wars and further developed them, before introducing the new arrow-firing ballista and stone-throwing onager. This title traces the often controversial design, development and construction of these weapons throughout the history of the classical world.(Duncan B Campbell, ISBN: ISBN: 1841766348, £8.99)
