A Great PD Opportunity for Civics Teachers in the U.S.
Summer might feel like it is a long way right now. But now is the time to start thinking about and planning for professional development you might do this summer. To that end, the National Archives is now accepting applications for the 2023 Civics for All U.S. Teacher Institute. The 2023 Civics for All U.S. […]
The National Archives to Host Online Professional Development This Summer
The National Archives offers many excellent resources for history teachers. For example, they recently published a new guide to understanding perspectives in primary sources. And this summer the National Archives will be hosting free online professional development events for teachers. The first event is on July 12th through the 14th. It is the Truman Library […]
Understanding Perspectives in Primary Sources – A New National Archives Resource
Once they understood the difference between a primary and secondary source, helping students understand the context, meaning, and purpose of primary source documents was one of the things that I enjoyed the most when I taught U.S. History. To that end, I often used resources from the National Archives Daily Document RSS feed to spark […]
Influenza Archives – A History Lesson
Monday’s featured artifact on Today’s Document from the National Archives was “Nurse wearing a mask as protection against influenza. September 13, 1918.” As is often the case with items in the daily feed there was a link to additional information about the image. In this case the additional information was a National Archives collection of […]
Tracing the Evolution of Telephones – A Search Challenge for Students
Every year on March 7th the National Archives Daily Document features Alexander Graham Bell’s drawing for his telephone patent. Take a look at that drawing and you might start wondering, like I did a few years ago, about how many changes and improvements to that design have been made since 1876. The patent search option […]
Daily Artifacts of U.S. History
Earlier this week I was catching up on some RSS feeds in Feedly when I came across this drawing from the patent application for the board game that became Monopoly. That drawing was the featured artifact of the day on the Today’s Document website published by the U.S. National Archives. It’s a resource that I […]
How to Find Historical Comics and Create Lessons With Them
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Docs Teach that featured the idea of creating history lessons that incorporate historical comics. That email sent me to Docs Teach where there is a small collection of historical comics. Since Docs Teach is a project of the U.S. National Archives all of the comics […]
Lee’s Map of Gettysburg – And Tools for Making It Interactive
Today’s featured document featured by the National Archives is a copy of General Robert E. Lee’s map of the Battle of Gettysburg. If you download a copy of the map (which you can do as it is in the public domain) and then zoom-in on it, you will be able to see the notations about […]
Find the Features of Digital Vaults in DocsTeach
The U.S. National Archives used to have a great feature called the National Archives Digital Vaults. The Digital Vaults site offered great tools for teaching with primary sources from the National Archives. One of the aspects that I particularly liked was called “pathways challenges” which allowed students to see the connections between events and primary […]
The National Archives and the Yeti
The U.S. National Archives has a great feature called Today’s Document. Today’s Document features one historical document (almost always a primary source) per day. Sometimes the documents are serious while other times the documents are not so serious. Sunday’s featured document was a perfect example of a not-so-serious document. On Sunday Today’s Document was Regulations […]
DocsTeach Adds New Analysis Activities for Students
DocsTeach is a great resource for teachers of U.S. History. DocsTeach, produced by the National Archives Foundation, provides teachers with a free platform on which they can create online history lessons based on images, documents, audio recording, video recordings, and maps. The lessons that teachers create can be shared with their students through a free […]
Lighthouses and Designs for Democracy
Earlier this week the featured document from the U.S. National Archives was a drawing of the Matinicus Rock Lighthouse on the coast of Maine. The drawing is one of many in the Designs for Democracy series published by the National Archives. Designs for Democracy is an online exhibit created by the National Archives and Records Administration. The […]
Nixon’s Visit to China – Documents and Video
Last week the National Archives Today’s Document feed featured two artifacts from President Nixon’s landmark visit to China in 1972. The first document was actually a photography of Air Force One arriving in China. The second document was the menu from one of the dinners in Peking. Looking at these documents reminded me of some […]
The National Archives’ Today’s Document Offers Good Lesson Ideas
The US National Archives is a great resource for history teachers to keep in their books. I’ve written about some of their services in the past (here and here) and today I’d like to remind you of the National Archives Today’s Document feed. On a daily basis Today’s Document features a new image or document from the United […]