New Features of the LOC’s By the People
By the People is a Library of Congress project that I’ve written about and featured in my Teaching History With Technology courses since 2018. On By the People teachers and students can contribute to crowd-sourcing transcriptions of thousands of primary source documents. Some of the collections that I’ve featured over the years have been campaigns […]
A New Primary Source Crowd-sourcing Project from the Library of Congress
By the People is a crowd-sourcing project that enlists the help of the public to transcribe thousands of primary source documents that are housed by and have been scanned by the Library of Congress. Over the years there have been collections of documents from the American Civil War, papers from the American Revolution, presidential papers, documents […]
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 […]
New Lesson Plans from DocsTeach
DocsTeach is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. The platform makes it easy to find curated collections of primary source documents and offers great templates for creating online lessons based on those documents. And if you don’t have time to make a new activity, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary […]
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 […]
World History Commons – Annotated Primary Sources for Students
World History Commons offers a free collection of more than 1700 primary sources covering a wide array of themes and events in world history. The best part is that all of the primary sources in the collection are annotated with helpful notes for students. World History Commons also offers a collection of free teaching guides […]
Return to Sender – Interactive Map of Postcards from WWI
Return to Sender provides an interesting way for students to find and read postcards sent to and from soldiers during World War I. Return to Sender is an interactive map on which students can see where postcards were sent in Europe during World War I. The postcards displayed through the map are part of the […]
Explore the Library of Congress on Your iPad
The Library of Congress Collections app is a free iPad app that offers a nice way for students and teachers to explore collections of artifacts housed by the Library of Congress. The collections available through the app are also available directly on the LOC website. The benefit of viewing them in the app is ability to […]
How to Find and Create Primary Source Lessons With DocsTeach
DocsTeach has been one of my go-to tools for social studies teachers for many years. Despite that recommendation I’ve never made a video on how it works, until now. DocsTeach is a free service offered by the National Archives through which you can find primary source lesson activities and create your own activities by using […]
DocsTeach Adds New Documents and Lessons About Suffrage
Earlier this week the Library of Congress launched a new crowdsourcing campaign to transcribe more than 20,000 primary source documents related to the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The LOC isn’t the only organization to make primary sources related to suffrage available online. DocsTeach, produced by the National Archives, has a Women’s Rights […]
Teaching With Historical Newspapers – An LOC Webinar Recording
There are two sites that often refer people to when I’m asked about locating copies of old newspapers. The first is the Google Newspaper Archive. The second is the Chronicling America collection from the Library of Congress. The Chronicling America collection contains more than 2,600 digitized copies of newspapers printed in the United States between […]
DocsTeach Adds Good Artifacts for Teaching About the Transcontinental Railroad
DocsTeach has long been one of my go-to recommendations for teachers of U.S. History. DocsTeach provides a wealth of digitized primary source artifacts that can be incorporated into lessons for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. You can search for those artifacts according to era in U.S. History, according to artifact type (text, […]
LOC Crowd – Crowdsourcing the Transcription of Primary Sources
The Library of Congress has launched a new crowdsourcing initiative to transcribe primary source documents. The new initiative simply called Crowd has contains collections of documents that the Library of Congress wants the public to help transcribe. Anyone can participate in the LOC’s Crowd project. To get started simply go to the site and click […]
Chronicling America – An Archive of 2,600+ Digitized Newspapers
Chronicling America is a great resource provided by the Library of Congress. On Chronicling America you can find more than 2,600 digitized copies of newspapers printed in the United States between 1789 and 1963. You can search through the collection according to date, state in which the newspaper was published, and keyword. All of the […]
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 […]
Online Activities for Teaching With Primary Sources
As a history teacher I have a natural attraction to old maps, dusty documents, and all manner of primary source media. While it is a passion for me, I fully recognize that learning to read, evaluate, and utilize primary sources can be long process for some students. The following are some of the online activities […]
Analyzing Word Choice in a Presidential Statement
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on this day in 1963. Later in the same day Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States. President Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One. When the plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base he gave a short statement. His speech card […]
A Great Journal for History Teachers
The Library of Congress has quite a number of great resources for teachers and students. The Student Discovery Sets are favorite amongst my favorite resources that I’ve featured in the past. That collection of resources was recently updated by the LOC. The recent additions to the Student Discovery Sets include iBooks about the New Deal, scientific […]
More Than 100 Sets of Primary Source Documents for Students
A few years ago I wrote a post about searching through the Digital Public Library of America to locate primary source documents to use with students. At that point the DPLA had relatively few, loosely organized collections. Yesterday, I received an email from DPLA informing me that they now have more than 100 primary source […]