Archives: Archives and Education part 2

In response to this week’s readings about outreach, and the prompt on the syllabus, I took a look at the lesson plans from NARA’s Teachingwith Documents. The homepage is written for teachers and the material is separated into sections that easily align with chronological American history teaching sections. I clicked on ‘Expansionand Reform (1801-1868)’ and because I have recently spent time at APS, was drawn into 'The Lewis and Clark Expedition' lesson plan.

The main page of the lesson plan includes a short narrative of the Lewis and Clark Expedition followed by links to documents from the archives. On a sidebar are links to more resources, including the National History Standards that the lesson correlates to and more distinct teaching activities. The lesson plan emphasizes the Louisiana Purchase and Manifest Destiny. The website does not specify target ages, but this one seems to be most appropriate for high schools.

That the documents only include items from the National Archives highlights one of the limitations of this type of lesson plan. The Lewis and Clark journals, along with much of the expedition’s documentation are at the APS. This absence has little affect on the lesson plan, and to its credit it does list the printed copy of the journals as an additional resource. In terms of teaching students how to do research, it could be beneficial that the National Archives only has a limited selection of relevant documents because students can learn that finding an answer to a question involves looking in multiple places.

In terms of outreach, the lesson plans are effective. Making the lesson plans involve consulting with high school teachers, who wrote the narratives introducing the topics. Linking the plans with school standards also follow Rettig’s suggestion of capitalizing on what the target public already uses and needs. Now having looked at two different education sites, and visited a few more (DocsTeach from the National Archives may be a later post), I am only beginning to understand the scale and possibilities of this type of outreach.

Archives: Education and the Archives

Today I spent some time looking at digital educational programs from archives. The topics included all fit into a national, twentieth century timeline of events. I landed on the Presidential Libraries and Museums page of the National Archives that lists different educational initiatives. 

I focused my looking on the Presidential Timeline, which includes historical sources, exhibits, and activities for presidents beginning with Hoover.I specifically looked at the educational activity “Visiting History - President Clinton and Little Rock Central High School.” It is a historical investigation into an event commemorating a historical event. “Visiting History” was particularly poignant because it asked student to look at primary source materials from Little Rock in 1957 and about President Clinton in 1999. Additionally, it involved an activity where the students research a historic site local to them and track down primary sources about the site. I appreciated the reflectivity of the assignment. Asking students to consider primary sources from two periods is a good way to get them to think about change and what it means for a source to be historical. Asking the students to find their own historic site engages them in the question of how society labels certain sites as historic.

Besides linking to digitized sources, the website exists segregated from the archives. I wish that the primary sources had a link back to their place in the actual digital archives website, as that may be a way to make them consider the archives as the place where all of the information comes from. (See: here for an example of how the sources are formatted.)

Most of the educational initiatives that I looked at incorporated a combination of materials such as timelines, introductions to events and historical context, and activities where the students can look at primary sources and actively interpret them. I am curious if there are any studies about the use of these types of digital activities and feedback from the students and teachers that use them.