Teaching
History Online
Number
41: 2nd June, 2002
Introduction
1.
The
American West
2.
E-Dig
Egypt
3.
Labor
Hall of Fame
4.
The
New Deal
5.
History
Reading Room
6.
Greater Manchester
County Record Office
7.
Humbul
Humanities Hub
8.
Schwab
History Writings
9.
War Diaries
1939-1945
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 19,350 subscribers to the newsletter.
John Simkin
spartacus@pavilion.co.uk
The
American West: Primary sources (memoirs, journals, letters and
photos) and lesson plans on the American West. These materials are
designed for middle and high school students, although extension suggestions
may help you modify them for younger students. Each lesson plan provides
objectives, standards correlations, background information, web links,
procedures, extension suggestions, and assessment recommendations.
Lessons include: The Transcontinental Railroad, Mark Twain and the
American West, African-Americans in the American West, Images of the
West, Making Myths: The West in Public and Private Writings, Water
Use: Tragedy in the Owens River Valley, Infectious Disease and Natural
Disasters.
E-Dig
Egypt: This website is based on work carried out by archaeologists
from the British Museum at an Egyptian burial site called the Tomb
of Senneferi. The Dig Director, Nigel Strudwick, has created a website
detailing their work over the last few years. Students are given the
opportunity to take part in a virtual archaeological dig, carrying
out some of the roles found on a real dig. The website is designed
as a Webquest, with children taking on roles and completing a task.
A variety of activities, resources and questions are presented in
a structured way, which children can work through to complete their
'mission'. The resources and activities can also be used individually,
to teach or consolidate specific curriculum areas or concepts.
Labor
Hall of Fame: Elevation to the American Labor Hall of Fame is
arrived at by a selection panel composed of distinguished historians,
academicians, trade union officials and government leaders, past and
present. A single honoree is chosen each year, and so far the website
includes biographies of Samuel Gompers, Eugene V. Debs, James P. Mitchell,
Terence V. Powerly, A. Philip Randolph, Francis Perkins, Sidney Hillman,
Mother Jones, John L. Lewis, Walter P. Reuther, Robert F. Wagner,
William Green, David Dubinsky and Cesar E. Chavez.
The
New Deal:
A collection of articles on the New Deal. The website includes details
of the legislation introduced by Franklin D. Roosevelt including the
Works Projects Administration, Agricultural
Adjustment Act, Tennessee Valley Authority, National Recovery Act,
Federal Art Project, Federal Theatre Project, Social Security Act,
Public Works Administration, Federal Securities Act, National Youth
Administration, National Housing Act, Federal Emergency Relief, Civilian
Conservation Corps, Federal Writers Project, National Labour Relations
Act and the Fair Employment Act. The website also
includes biographies of some of the key figures of the New Deal period.
History
Reading Room: This BBC website provides a collection of articles
on history. Recent additions include Thomas Paine (John Belchem),
Queen Victoria's Childhood (Lynne Vallone), The Levellers (Tony Benn),
The Lady of the Lamp (Mark Bostridge), The Battle of Britain (Chris
Bellamy), Was the American Revolution Inevitable? (Francis Cogliano),
The Personality of Charles I (Richard Crust) and British Revolution
in the Early 19th Century: How Close? (Eric Evans).
Greater
Manchester County Record Office collects historical archives relating
to the history of Greater Manchester. The collections cover a wide
variety of material such as medieval documents on parchment, eighteenth
century court martial records, business records, newspapers, maps
and much more. The website includes an education pack that can be
accessed online. The pack is ideal for courses on Victorian England.
It includes original sources, with questions and activities designed
to stimulate learning.
Humbul
Humanities Hub: Humbul helps humanities professionals access relevant
online resources. Employing a distributed network of subject specialist
cataloguers across the UK, the Humbul Humanities Hub, based at the
University of Oxford, is building a catalogue of evaluated online
resources that enables teachers, researchers and students to find
resources that make a difference. A suite of personalised services
– My Humbul – has been developed to aid users in their search
for quality online resources. Registered users (registration is free)
may take advantage of an alerting service that will notify users by
email when new records have been added to Humbul that match their
search criteria. Users are able to select records from Humbul, add
their own annotations, and export the data in the form of a few lines
of html to add to their webpage. Whenever anyone visits their webpage
it will dynamically retrieve the selected records from Humbul.
Schwab
History Writings: Two historic essays resulting from Helmut Schwab's
encounter with new or unique source material. One essay presents a
biographical sketch of the multifaceted personality and turbulent
life of Henry Villard, 1835-1900; the great journalist, railway builder,
industrialist, and abolitionist. Some of the new source material is
important, some is interesting, and some is amusing to read. The other
essay presents a critical analysis of source material available as
records from the Paris Peace Conference 1919 - the "Papers of
Woodrow Wilson", the official minutes issued by the secretary,
Hankey, and the notes kept by the French interpreter, Mantoux. No
one source is complete or fully correct, as a partial word-by-word
comparison demonstrates.
Book
Section
War
Diaries 1939-1945: For most of the Second World War General Sir
Alan Brooke, later Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, was Chief of the
Imperial General Staff (CIGS) and Winston Churchill's principal military
adviser, and antagonist, in the inner councils of war. He also led
the British military in the bargaining and brokering of the Grand
Alliance with Roosevelt and Stalin, in the great conferences at Casablanca,
Tehran, Washington and Yalta. These diaries provide a blow-by-blow
account of how the Second World War was waged and eventually won,
from the man at Churchill's elbow. They open a unique window onto
the inner workings of the Grand Alliance. Alanbrooke's implacable
arguments spared no one - politicians, Americans, Russians, Chinese,
even his own generals: Wavell, Auchinleck, Montgomery, Slim, Alexander.
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, ISBN 0 297 60731 6)
Available from Amazon Books
(order below)
