C-Span Classroom revisited!

Here is an update on this post:


http://www.karenshistoryproject.com/2010/06/special-offer-from-c-span.html

First of all, this timeline is HUGE and wonderful!
And it is still available.

C-Span really seems to like homeschoolers and they include home schools in their offerings. I participated in a contest at their C-Span Classroom and I won a Flip camera! I was very excited of course and went back and forth with the nice lady who emailed me about it and she was excited about the surge in homeschool participation. Lovely to be not just allowed but actually welcomed!

If you haven't checked out the C-Span Classroom website, definitely put it on your Take A Look list.

100 Historical Sites Every American Should See

I have been swamped trying to get some workshops ready for a local conference but I really want you to see this handy site:

100 Historical Sites Every American Should See

The descriptions are short and sweet and each one is linked to a website about the site which makes it convenient. It is divided into sections like Natural Wonders and Memorials. Definitely something to bookmark and use for inspiration!

The Renaissance Connection

From the introduction:

Welcome to The Renaissance Connection, the Allentown Art Museum's interactive educational web site. With the simple click of a mouse button, travel 500 years into the past to discover many Renaissance innovations revealed through the Allentown Art Museum's Samuel H. Kress Collection of European art.

There is a cool flash intro. If your cannot play flash, you can skip it. The website itself has several sections. The Art Explorer is an interactive timeline with all kinds of details of Renaissance life in chronological order. You can access it as a timeline, a map or an alphabetical list.

The Time Telescope focuses on innovations. You can slide the time dial to see how various innovations built on each other. For example, Libraries and Web goes back to Textbooks (1800), First American College (1600), and then to the Renaissance connection and the printing press in the 1400s.

Be a Patron of the Arts is an entertaining interactive "game" that demonstrates the how and why of the money flow. You make choices as you go along that results in a specific piece of artwork created. This website gets an A+ on packing information into a fun format.

There is also an interesting section on The Artist's Life and Lesson Plans to help you utilize the site. This website can be accessed as a plain html site as well. It is still colorful and informative, it just doesn't have all the bells and whistles and interaction that the flash version does. I highly recommend accessing it as a flash if you have that capacity.

A Brief (and brutal) History of Education

From the Psychology Today website, a piece by Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College...

A Brief History of Education

Mr. Gray opens with a statement that presents a viewpoint that I come into constant contact with in my interactions as a homeschooler with the general public...

When we see that children everywhere are required by law to go to school, that almost all schools are structured in the same way, and that our society goes to a great deal of trouble and expense to provide such schools, we tend naturally to assume that there must be some good, logical reason for all this.

He goes on to outline why schools being what they are is a direct result of the historical origins of "school." Not the end result of a logical, rational inquiry into how children learn best.One point that Dr. Gray brings out is that play is the natural way that children learn and that school, as it came about historically, does not mix well with play at all. Learning has become the work of children and not something that happens through spontaneous play. And we wonder why so many students quickly lose their love of learning and any internal motivation to apply themselves to study?

The Great Chicago Fire

The Great Chicago Fire and The Web of Memory

This website was created to mark the 125th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire. The introduction is a great place to start as it describes how the website is organized and the parts of each section. There is a conscious effort to describe how historical accounts come to be and to what uses such a collection can be put. This event is particularly useful in this sense as Chicago was in the world's focal point at a time of great change. Reading through the impressive collection of primary sources is fascinating and is made simpler by the uncluttered layout.

From the site:

This exhibit attempts to make its own contribution to the memory of the conflagration by offering for scrutiny some of the major ways in which the Great Chicago Fire has been remembered. And perhaps its own mode of presentation, through wires and processors and monitors, is particularly appropriate, for it reminds us of the extent to which our sense of the past is always mediated.

Check out the panorama of 1858 found at the bottom of the Great Chicago Fire page. Truly there is page after page of accounts and pictures from before and after the fire. I had to make myself stop reading and clicking and get on with posting it for you.

4th of July - A Different Perspective

In our home school, the study of history has been enlivened by reading from a variety of perspectives. When confronted by information and opinions and interpretations that contradict our current take on the matter, we are forced to research, evaluate, and either defend our own status quo or allow it to be shaped by new information or even supplanted if the new evidence proves itself strong enough. Our view becomes stronger or it comes closer to the truth or both.

So I find contrarian articles like this one to be an interesting challenge. Now in this particular case, I happen to believe that the author has some valid points. But my post today is not to argue for celebrating Happy Secession Day rather than 4th of July - it is simply to encourage other parents not to be afraid of opposing viewpoints. Students will encounter them sooner or later - to my mind, doing so under my tutelage is preferred. History by its very nature always comes presented through a worldview lens once you get past the bare facts...and sometimes even the facts are influenced by the perspective of the reporter.

By the by, here is a wonderful website for examining the Declaration of Independence in close detail.

Special Offer from C-Span!

Get this huge Presidential Timeline from C-Span - free to teachers and yes, they are including homeschoolers!

 

This is the C-Span Classroom that offers free primary resources to social studies teachers. Under one tab is a list of subjects like Campaigns and Elections, Civil Liberties, Economics, Rule of Law and World History. When you click on a subject, you get a long list of videos relating to that subject. Right now I am listening to Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition, where the author of a current book of that title, Dan Okrent, is addressing a group at the Chicago History Museum. It is very interesting so far, in the nature of a lecture. I am browsing through other topic areas and I am seeing a range of videos across the political spectrum. This could be an amazing resource especially for those with jr high and high school students.

There is a pdf on how to use the C-Span video library that details:

The C-SPAN Video Library is a unique, free, and searchable public service that lets you watch C-SPAN programs whenever you want. It records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, media, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987 is contained in the C-SPAN Video Library and is immediately accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by C-SPAN.

Can I just say, WOW? I had no idea that this existed in this form so readily accessible! The pdf goes on to explain exactly how to use clips or parts of clips and how to find specific programs. There are lesson plans and handouts at the C-Span Classroom. These will be designed for classroom use obviously, but you can often get good ideas from plans like these and the handouts could be very useful. Here is one about the Bill of Rights which is essentially just a one page listing of the rights. Here is an interesting one about the Role of the President that includes current events questions.

This website also includes a Congressional Chronicle:

The C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle is an index to the C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor proceedings. The video recordings are matched with the text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is available. It only includes members who appeared on the floor to deliver or insert their remarks. The text included here is what the member submitted. Each appearance has a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual remarks.

Last, but not least, is a listing of quite a few other C-Span website including American Presidents: Life Portraits. This was created as a companion to their 20th Anniversary program and so provides links to those programs. This would be a nice adjunct to the free timeline offer.