ideas for integrating technology into teaching with primary sources
First draft vs final drafts This is a guest post from Alyssa Park, a fourth-grade teacher at Scarselli Elementary School in Nevada. Nevada map QFT lesson plan Alyssa’s Twitter thread showing student work from this lesson Related resources
Freedom Summer 1964 is a free digital learning tool from the Indiana University Center on Representative Government that explores key events surrounding this time in America’s history, and the impact of the Civil Rights movement on civil rights legislation. In Freedom Summer, players predict the outcomes of both civil and Congressional actions, and discover how…
Juxtapose, from Northwestern University’s Knight Lab, helps one compare two similar sources, particularly photographs or maps, which can help show before/after stories or change over time. Above you can see two portraits of Abraham Lincoln, one from 1861 shortly after his first inauguration and the other from 1865 shortly before his second inauguration and subsequent…
In a TPS Network resource album available to the public, elementary teacher librarian and former teacher in residence at the Library of Congress, Tom Bober (@CaptainLibrary), outlines how his students analyzed an historical newspaper article using the See Think Wonder strategy that layered in the Post-it® app for iPad to help organize students’ thinking. The…
This is a guest post from Tim Anderson, a middle school English teacher and Google Certified Educator at Sulphur Springs Elementary School in Jonesborough, Tennessee. There often seems to be a disconnect between students and historical events. Connecting literature to history helps make it come alive for students. Since my eighth graders are studying the…
Missouri high school social studies teacher @Bethany_Petty posted a creative idea for integrating technology into primary source learning that she dubbed as Hashtags Through History. Here is a brief overview from her blog Teaching with Technology. This activity requires students to locate an image that depicts a historic event, create a username for a person that lived…
This is a guest post from veteran teacher Heather Klos, an 8th grade U.S. history teacher and the Social Studies department chair at Crownover Middle School in Corinth, Texas. Primary sources are one of the most valuable tools we have as social studies teachers. What better way to incorporate primary sources for the 21st century learner than through…
This is a guest post from Patti Winch, the Middle School Social Studies Specialist for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) in Virginia. I first learned about Zoom-ins about 10 years ago when taking a class with Northern Virginia’s Teaching with Primary Sources program or TPSNVA. Zoom-ins were originally developed by a FCPS teacher and subsequently shared…
This is a guest post from Kelly Grotrian, an American History teacher at East Brunswick High School in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Far and away my favorite Google App for Education is Google Forms. Forms allows you to present a variety of primary sources to students in an organized fashion and to collect data on…
This is a guest post by Ruth Ferris, an elementary school librarian from Billings, Montana, and a grantee in the TPS Regional Grant Program. It is always a pleasure when I can connect my love of books with my love of history, seasoned with technology. One favorite tool is ThingLink, which allows you to take a picture and embed links…
Can an article from 2009 really be useful in helping educators think about the pedagogy of integrating technology with primary source learning? The answer is absolutely! To learn why and how, read the TPS Journal article Technology Integration and Primary Sources: Linking the Learner to Learning written by Peggy O’Neill-Jones, Director of the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary…
This is a guest post from Kerry Gallagher, a Technology Integration Specialist at St. John’s Prep, a 1:1 iPad school serving grades 6-12, and former middle and high school history teacher. We learn about the lives of our friends partly through the images they share with us on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and…