Cyber archives

Zipping around the internet this week, I've found several fantastic websites that offer primary sources and multimedia lesson supplements to history teachers. I am relieved that I will be able to pursue my ambition to work with students on "reading" non-textual forms of history—not only to help them envision the past, but more importantly to help them learn to read visual texts. We're talking posters, photographs, art, monuments, memorials, statues, buildings, film, music, commercials, fashion. I can't imagine teaching without incorporating these unwritten "raw materials" of historical narrative into my lessons.

Forcing students to engage with only written words would fall short of my disciplinary objective to help them interpret the world (past and present) as a collage of texts teeming with messages. It will be my job to teach students to think like historians about how stories are pieced together by fragmented voices and conflicting artifacts of experience. While written primary sources offer invaluable details and perspectives, visual representations can say just as much...and maybe more. The difference with visual sources is that students will have to read between unwritten lines. This skill is invaluable to students as they become increasingly reliant upon the internet; thinking like historians will help them develop a more discerning eye as they are inundated with information in the years to come.

I've been reading and reflecting on the difference between teaching history as a process of inquiry instead of teaching it as a process of memorizing and regurgitating names and dates. I am so glad that I'm becoming a history teacher in an era where primary sources are being democratized on the web so students have the resources to think like historians. 

Here's my short list of online primary source collections so far:

http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/

http://www.loc.gov/index.html

http://chnm.gmu.edu/

http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/index.html