Learning from the Source: Print Advertising Across the Centuries

Learning from the Source: Print Advertising Across the Centuries

Overview Advertisements showcase products and the latest technology while reflecting life and society as we know it, or wish it to be. This project encourages students to use their natural curiosity about the similarities between the past, present, and future to analyze and compare and contrast historical, contemporary, and hypothetical print advertisements of the future.*…

Guided Primary Source Analysis: Tesla’s 1922 Tech Predictions

Guided Primary Source Analysis: Tesla’s 1922 Tech Predictions

Access this newspaper page online and zoom into the cartoon, what inventions are referenced in the comic? Now read the article. Are the same inventions referenced in the text? What other inventions does the article discuss? List the inventions discussed in the article that are a reality today. Compare and contrast one of the predicted inventions…

Finding Resources: Chronicling America Historic Newspapers Advanced Search Tips

Finding Resources: Chronicling America Historic Newspapers Advanced Search Tips

Overview Chronicling America Historic Newspapers is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress, as a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with coverage from 1836-1922. As of March, 2013, the Chronicling American digitized database contained more…

Today in History: Nellie Bly Circles the Globe

Today in History: Nellie Bly Circles the Globe

Today in History–January 25–the Library of Congress features Nellie Bly, who completed her circumnavigation of the globe on this day in 1890. This intrepid female reporter made the journey in just 72 days, using many different forms of transportation, including ship, train, jinricksha, sampan, horse, and burro. Learn more about this globetrotter and turn of the century transportation by visiting the Today in History section…

Primary Source Learning: Gilded Age Teaching Resources & Strategies

Primary Source Learning: Gilded Age Teaching Resources & Strategies

This morning I saw a tweet mentioning primary sources related to immigration in the Gilded Age and I began to wonder . . . What learning activities related to the Gilded Age could we imagine using Library of Congress primary sources? What other teaching resources and strategies are available on LOC.gov and elsewhere? See the results…

Finding Resources: Chronicling America Historic Newspaper Topic Guides

Finding Resources: Chronicling America Historic Newspaper Topic Guides

The Teaching with Library of Congress blog provides some great tips for finding articles in the Chronicling America Historic Newspaper Collections and provides some teaching ideas as well. Be sure to check out, too, the following learning activity: Comparing Reports: Battle of Little Bighorn. Below is a list of topic guides by subject, each of which…

Learning from the Source: Science Radium Romp

Learning from the Source: Science Radium Romp

The Teaching with the Library of Congress blog highlighted the Radium Dance song sheet cover and gave some great science-related teaching ideas for using the Chronicling America historical newspaper collection to make historical connections to the Curie discovery of radium and early popular uses for this chemical element. Another idea would be to have students…

Learning from the Source: Comparing Reports of the Battle of Little Bighorn

Learning from the Source: Comparing Reports of the Battle of Little Bighorn

Have students collaborate to compare U.S. newspaper coverage of the Battle of Little Bighorn with eyewitness accounts from Native Americans who were there. Ask them to compare descriptions of the battle as well as characterizations of opposing forces. Remind students to look for and note differences in tone, particularly as defined by word choice. You…