Teaching History Online
Number 5: April, 2001
Contents
Introduction
Spartacus Educational will be publishing 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 create a community of people involved in using the internet to teach history.
John Simkin
Schools History has recently been re-launched. The site now offers a range of online lessons, quizzes and a new revision guide covering a variety of subjects. Additions have been made to many of the sections, including content in the Weimar Germany unit, activities and content to the Second World War section and a number of activities throughout various parts of the Medicine Through Time section. The First World War section has been expanded and now boasts a picture gallery, pages on war poetry, technological advances and Life in the Trenches along with a number of accompanying worksheets. The site has also launched a Pictorial Resource section that currently offers pictures related to the Tudors, Weimar and Nazi Germany, Castles and the D Day landing beaches amongst others.
Andrew Moore is in the process of creating a website on the resources available for the study of Anne Frank and the Holocaust. It has been written to coincide with the History for Today Anne Frank exhibition which is currently touring the UK. The site will provide teaching resources, related to Anne Frank and the Holocaust, for a wide range of subjects. Teachers and educators are invited to send in materials that they would like to see added to this large database of resources on Anne Frank.
This is an excellent website devoted to the art produced during the First World War. Created to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Armistice, the database includes 54 artists and images of 100 pictures from museums in London, Paris, Berlin, Bonn, Vienna, Caen and Verdun. All the exhibits includes background details of the work and a brief biography of the artist. The paintings are listed under seven different categories: War Declared, Fighting Men, Age of Artillery, The Battlefield, Total War, Suffering and Death.
The Public Record Office's award winning Learning Curve website has undergone a re-design to speed up access to its growing resources. There is now also a full index of the site. Also new this month is a new set of 11 Snapshots written by Chris Culpin including subject ranging form Henry VIII to the Holocaust.
The Britannia Lexicon is an on-line glossary of keywords used during the Middle Ages. Organised like a dictionary, the user can discover the meaning of legal, feudal, chivalric, monastic, military and architectural terms associated with the Medieval period. This is an open-ended project and Britannia intends to add lengthier entries on particular events, wars, movements and organisations that will give a more in-depth view of the period.
Paul Halsall has created a marvellous resource for all historians on the Internet. This website contains links to thousands of documents on the Medieval period. For students the best starting point is 'Selected Sources' or 'Search the Sourcebook'. Other sections include 'Maps and Images' and ''Medieval Films'.
A growing number of history teachers are becoming interested in creating websites for their students. This month Teaching History Online has commissioned Andrew Moore to write and article on web design. It contains sections on: What are you trying to do?, Who is the audience?, Learning how HTML works, Text editors and WYSIWYG HTML editors, What equipment is your audience using?, Text and images, Frames and tables, Site structure, Hyperlinks, redundancy and the three-clicks rule, Use of colour and background images and style sheets. The full article can be found at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/history5a.htm.
Elijah Wald has written a fascinating biography of Josh White, the blues and folk singer. Wald explores the complexities of White's music, his stereotypes, his political involvements and the persecution he suffered during the McCarthy era. Ward has also created a website on the book where he includes extra photographs and information on Josh White.
McCarthyism is the latest of the Spartacus Educational Encyclopaedias. Each entry contains a narrative, illustrations and primary sources. The text within each entry is hypertexted to other relevant pages in the encyclopedia. In this way it is possible to research individual people and events in great detail. The sources are also hypertexted so the student is able to find out about the writer, artist, newspaper, organization, etc., that produced the material.
Events, Issues & Organizations: Espionage Act, Sedition Act, The Red Scare (1919-20), Federal Bureau of Investigations, American Communist Party, Art Students League, Sacco-Vanzetti Case, Group Theatre, Federal Writers Project, WPA Federal Art Project, Federal Theatre Project, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, Alien Registration Act, House of Un-American Activities, McCarthyism, Internal Security Act, Red Spy Queen, Red Channels, Eugene Dennis Case, Rosenberg Case, McCarran-Walter Act, Hollywood Ten (24).
Communist Spies: Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers, Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Alger Hiss, Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg (8)
The Investigators: Roy Cohn, Martin Dies, Edward J. Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Patrick McCarran, Joseph McCarthy, Karl Mundt, Richard Nixon, A. M. Palmer, John Rankin, David Schine, J. Parnell Thomas, Clyde Tolson, Harold Velde, Francis E. Walter, John Wood (16)
The Informers: Louis Budenz, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Collins, Edward Dmytryk, Max Eastman, Michael Gordon, Roy Huggins, Burl Ives, Elia Kazan, Isobel Lennart, Larry Parks, Robert Rossen, Budd Schulberg, Robert Taylor, Leo Townsend, Josh White (16)
Blacklisted: Larry Adler, Luther Adler, Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Bromberg, Alan Campbell, Charlie Chaplin, Lester Cole, Aaron Copland, Jeff Corey, Howard Da Silvia, Hanns Eisler, Carl Foreman, John Garfield, Will Geer, Paul Green, Dashiell Hammett, Yip Harburg, Lillian Hellman, Marsha Hunt, Paul Jarrico, Sidney Kingsley, Ring Lardner Jr., John H. Lawson, Canada Lee, Philip Loeb, Joseph Losey, Albert Maltz, Arthur Miller, Zero Mostel, Samuel Ornitz, Dorothy Parker, Abraham Polonsky, John Randolph, Anne Revere, Paul Robeson, Adrian Scott, Pete Seeger, David Ogden Stewart, Gale Sondergaard, Dalton Trumbo, Louis Untermeyer, Orson Welles, Michael Wilson, Richard Wright (48)
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.