It’s always Teacher Appreciation Week at the National Archives!
Our Education Specialists work year-round to provide teachers with free resources for teaching with primary sources. From DC to our National Archives and Presidential Library locations around the country, we create and share lesson plans, learning activities, field trip and professional development opportunities, and multimedia and web content. Our new blog is the best way to stay up-to-date on our latest resources. So far we’ve included posts about the Common Core Standards, document spotlights, online tools, partner organizations, professional development, free programs, research tips, and of course teaching activities and lesson plans from our online site for teaching with documents, DocsTeach.org.
- Find our Education Updates Blog at http://blogs.archives.gov/education/ and subscribe via email.
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Tonight we’re at Social Studies: How Educators are using Social Media.
Are you a teacher? Do you use Today’s Document or other social media in the classroom?
Calling All Teachers!
The Center for Legislative Archives has a new home on DocsTeach! You can use this special page to find historical documents and teach about representative democracy, how Congress works, and the important role that Congress has played throughout American history.
On DocsTeach you can discover thousands of primary sources and learning activities related to history and government. The activities help students practice historical thinking by: focusing on details, making connections, finding a sequence, mapping history, weighing the evidence, and seeing the big picture. If you are a registered user, you can borrow from and modify an ever-expanding collection of activities, and create new ones for your students using the online tools.
The New DocsTeach App for iPad!
This week our Education colleagues at the National Archives announced the DocsTeach App for iPad, extending the dynamic learning opportunities available from the DocsTeach.org website to iPad users. (This marks the second mobile app from the National Archives, joining our Today’s Document app.)
Using the app, you can choose a topic, such as “Civics & Government” or “Postwar U.S. 1945 – early 1970s,” and challenge yourself with a DocsTeach activity to interact with stories, events, and ideas of the past. All activities are based on primary source documents from the holdings of the National Archives, such as the U.S. Constitution, the canceled check for the purchase of Alaska, and Thomas Edison’s patent drawing for the light bulb. The activities were created by the National Archives education team and an army of DocsTeach users.
