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  • I decided to look at a 19th century figure, Dorothea Dix.  This had some challenges because not a lot of docs for this period are digitalized. 

    1)  My Prologue article was from the Summer 2010, vol 42, No. 2 edition, entitled "The Records of St. Elizabeth's Hospital at the National Archives,"  By Frances McMillen and James S. Kane.  This article focused on a federal hospital founded by Dorothea Dix using her philosophy of moral treatment for the mentally ill.  Using the institution as a backdrop, it framed the career of Dix and some of its inmates, including, recently, housing John Hinckley Jr, attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan.

    2)  The Primary Source material came from the Records of the Adjutant Generals Office, 1762-1984; specifically "Papers Related to Female Nurses in the Civil War, Compiled 1861-1865"   These are not digitalized.  My research into these would have to be done at the National Archives in Washington DC.

    3)  The Digital Vault had one great source pop-up immediately upon entering the search for Dorothea Dix.  This was Record # 11781, a circular issued by Dorothea Dix herself discussing the qualifications for female nurses during the Civil War.  The quote taken from the document seemed fitting, "Matronly persons...will always have preference."

    4)  Obviously there are no video sources available from the 19th century.  What is interesting is the you tube site is filled with numerous amateur documentaries...some pretty sketchy, like an animated version; to a more academically crafted documentary like the one I chose which was created for last year's National History Day competition.  I have used student made documentaries for years....here I have numerous ready examples to show students.  Cool site.

  • I would like my final project to focus on BIA schools for native Alaskans, either in Alaska or elsewhere in the lower 48.  I was really struggling to find a Prologue article on this topic.  I searched for every combination of BIA, school, Alaska I could think of, and then gave up with that topic.  I did look at the index for Prologue as well as the general search box, and I didn't see anything relating to this topic there either.  I ended up searching for “Alaska” in the body and “Prologue” in the URL with “blogs” not in the URL.  I found a neat article about the panoramic photos taken in the early 1900s for topographic mapping purposes.  If you like photography it's a neat article as it discusses some of the early film techniques, and why moving to flexible film allowed this project to have success.  The article was titled "The Alaskan Frontier in Panorama," and here's a link http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/winter/panorama.....

     

    Using the OPA search function for information on Project Chariot yielded little in the way of digital records; however, I did find out that Anchorage is the place for much of the Project Chariot Files records.  I looked over a number of the descriptions for records that are available, and I saw that the Project Chariot Files are in RG 57, which are the Records of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1839-2008, which makes sense to me.  However, the Final Reports A and B are classified as BIA documents in RG 75.  I was trying to figure out why that would be the case, and I’m guessing that the BIA generated the reports since there was so much backlash from the native communities on the slope.  I’m finding the patterns for which the Archives organize information nearly as interesting as the information itself.

     

     

    On Digitalvaults.org I had a lot of fun.  That site is really neat!  I played around for a little bit, and I didn’t find much in the way of the BIA in Alaska, but I did find a really neat letter from Reagan to Gorbachev about a meeting they had in Geneva in 1985.  It was a little odd to me to see a President writing letters by hand to foreign leaders, but that does make him seem much more genuine in trying to develop a more amicable relationship with the Soviet Union.

     

    The National Archives YouTube page is really something.  I had no idea it existed before this lesson, and what a resource!  My students love to watch video clips; even “boring” video clips are better than reading the textbook most days, so I try to abide their wishes and focus on using both text and video.  I have downloaded dozens of YouTube clips over the years, but this resource will help me find really relevant clips so much easier.  Once again I was looking for something to do with Alaskan schools, but somehow came across what appears to be a series by the U.S. Army called “The Big Picture.”  There are quite a few clips, most about 2 minutes in length, so I’m thinking they are just the beginnings of the show, that appear to be a kind of propaganda/documentary designed to explain aspects of the armed forces.  I watched a few of them, but I liked the one on Alaska, which talked about AK the buffer zone between an aggressive Communist nation and the free U.S.  The link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgvp-6jG9oY.

  • The related resource I found while searching the National Archives is Teaching With Documents: Documents Related to Brown v. Board of Edu.... This page contains an overview of the topic and links to many related documents.

    I also selected the DocsTeach.org link found on the left sidebar and found A Call to Action: Responses to Civil Rights. The caption states, "In this activity you will be introduced to the civil rights activities of Harry T. Moore, former schoolteacher and NAACP official in Florida in the 1940s, and analyze the public and federal government response to his murder in 1951." The activity leads student through analyzing document a document. The can then email the teacher a response based on the prompts given. I would need to practice using this resource before using it with students.

  • 7314585895?profile=originalAt the National Archive YouTube channel, I didn't find videos when I searched Little Rock or Topeka, but I did find interesting related video when I searched "civil rights." The first video I looked at is titled "Hollywood Round Table - Civil Rights, ca. 1963." Participants include Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Mankiewicz, James Baldwin and David Schoenbrun discussing the Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963, which had taken place on the same day. The video is a a 2 minute clip from a news report, and I was only able to view one participant speaking, the rest was commentator. I then found the 30 minute motion picture version titled "Hollywood Round Table." I think my students will connect with the idea that celebrities were actively involved. I also like the idea that they can see a round table discussion outside of the classroom.

     

  • 7314571888?profile=original At Digitalvaults.org, I searched for the general term, "Topeka." Here, along with other related documents, I found the 5/17/55 Supreme court ruling by Chief Justice Earl Warren and the 5/31/55 decree by Chief Justice Warren telling how the Brown v. Board decree would be carried out. 

    Regarding using digitalvaults.org, I really appreciated seeing related documents linked together. This will give great leads for further research. I also found that the related documents from my search can be re-accessed off of one link, which will help if I want to give a link to students. I really like the fact that once I found the documents at digitalvaults.org, I could then choose the link to research the records at the ARC, Archival Research Catalog. 

  • Primary Source Document found at OPA on the topic of desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas:

    Letter from Jackie Robinson to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, May 13, 1958, NARA Dwight D. Eisenhower Library White House Central Files. Jackie Robinson, as a corporate executive, wrote a letter to President Eisenhower about the desegration controversy. The letter is on the Chock Full o'Nuts Corporation letterhead. I'm very happy to have found this document because many of my students are already familiar with the story of Jackie Robinson in sports. His letter represents his commitment to being involved - even after sports.


    7314585261?profile=original

    "Life is not a spectator sport. . . . If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're escaping your life." Jackie Robinson 1964

     

  • I chose my topic to go along with my class read-aloud,The Lions of Little Rock, by Kristin Levine. The story is about a girl attending her first year of middle school in Little Rock, Arkansas who becomes friends with a colored girl. Her older sister is unable to attend high school because Little Rock is boycotting mandatory integration.

    I first searched Prologue articles for "Little Rock Nine" and found,  Eisenhower and the Little Rock Nine, a short post by Rob Crotty that includes a digitalized page of Eisenhower's journal. This article led me to a two part series by Jean Van Delinder published in Spring 2004, Vol. 36, No. 1. -  Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: A Landmark Case Unresolved Fifty Years Later Parts 1 & 2. 


  • A Prologue article related to my topic of “Andersonville Prison” was not found to my satisfaction. The search led me to Prologue: Selected Articles from Fall 2002, Vol. 34, No. 3. The related subject was “Civil War Images” A Day Captured at Andersonville Prison Camp: The Photographs of Andrew J. Riddle” Robert S. Davis Jr. This did not have a link, nor was it an article or essay, at least not viewable to me. Any other Prologue articles held only a mere mention of a soldier dying at the prison. There was a link to a NARAtions article-”Family Tree Friday: Confederate records about Union POWs which was quite informative.

    With all my searching for a Prologue article for Andersonville Prison, I stumbled onto some articles about women soldiers in the Civil War. So, if I change my topic to that, my Prologue article would be “Women Soldiers of the Civil War” by DeAnne Blanton, Spring 1993, Vol. 25, No. 1. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-...  

    Primary source document from OPA was a photo: “How They Buried Them Andersonville Prison, Georgia, August 17, 1864.  http://research.archives.gov/description/533035

    Document from digital vaults.org, found under the search terms "women soldiers": A circular from the civil war describing the requirements for women nurses: http://digitalvaults.org/#/detail/11781/

    YouTube movie: “Strictly Personal: WACs in the Military, 1944”  This is a film demonstrating different unbecoming ways of walking and the correct walk for a woman in the military. Got a real chuckle from this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0lRS3QdVzw

  • I itemized what I found below, but I also have a bit more work to do due to the change in how we can use YouTube on the district's servers.

     

    1. Fall 2012, Vol. 44, No. 2

    Errors in the Constitution—Typographical and Congressional

    This article from what appears to be a regular publication put out by the National Archives, is very interesting.  A Harvard PhD, Henry Bain, writes an interesting tale about the mistakes in the Constitution.  It is amazing to me the number of mistakes which exist in the original print of the Constitution.  In fact, the original print doesn’t seem to exist, though it seems to have been paid for (go figure, there was lack of governmental oversight on spending as far back as 1787).   The other thing about which I’d never thought was how many types of mistakes there are.  From plain old miswriting, to poor quality copies, to “creative editing” errors, and everything in between, our Constitution is rife with mistakes.  It makes me chuckle that I make my students edit so much, when even the framers of the Constitution couldn’t get it completely right.

     

    2.President Wilson's Message to Congress, January 8, 1918; Records of the United States Senate; Record Group 46; Records of the United States Senate; National Archives. I already knew what the 14 points were, and I knew quite a bit about them, but I was browsing material on Woodrow Wilson (why?  Because he was a history prof before he was a politician,  which makes him AWESOME), and noticed that the ARC has a “Document of the Day” section, which is a nice way to let people get introduced to the U.S.’s documentary history. 

     

    3.  Through digital vaults, I came across a picture of a Japanese Internment camp wedding.  I clicked on “additional resources” and found this , which I could totally use for a visual collage project on the treatment of Japanese and other East Asian families living in America during WWII. 

  • Apparently trying to cut and paste my response here breaks the character limit, so I've attached a document instead.

    lesson 5 response.docx

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