Historical Quests
Get out of your classroom and take a historical journey via the Internet...
Links
The Oregon-California Trails - Learning Center helps to educate people about the westward emigrant trails. The story of the emigrant trails is immensely rich and spans not only the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but continues to influence our world today.
While these topics are a mainstay of early US history, few interactive resources place students right in the middle of these environments. For an exhibit of U.S. pioneer life go to the Living History Farm.
The Perseus site contains about 400 ancient Greek texts and 13,000 images. While not interactive, it illustrates the bountiful historical sites, available on the Web and to which most schools lack access currently.
The National Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian,will contain 800,000 artifacts of Native American culture from sites all over North and South America. Three major facilities will be finished on the East Coast. Once the museum opens during 2004 many artifacts, including music, dance and stories, will be digitized for wider dissemination.
At one Iowa school a groomed portion of the schoolyard has been subdivided into acreage for woodland, prairie and wetland environments. Students perform hands-on "history" in these environments.
For a glimpse of pre-historic times visit Dinosauria. The Web contains many sites for the ever-entrancing dinosaur but this site's links are particularly well-done.
The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago is now the home of "Sue", the largest-ever fossil of a T-rex.
The Royal Museum of Ontario includes a virtual multi-media exhibition exploring Inuit historic carvings and culture.
Then, try Lascaux for studying the cave paintings of early man. The site is entered as though a flashlight is illustrating the paintings.
Humanities Interactive has been mounted by the Texas Humanities Council; the contents reflect that regional interest as well as special contrasts between ancient and modern sites, such as the Nile River. One of the best components explains the Borderlands area of the Rio Grande/Bravo Rio. Not only is it a thoughtful study of the role of rivers but also an exploration of two cultures. The site relies upon photographic exhibits but also contains student lessons. Probably, its strength, like most museums, lay in the assemblage of resources.
Slavery in America, underwritten by New York Life, is a deliberate search for previously unknown documents and eyewitness stories about slavery, the Jim Crow years and 20th century segregation. The site has been composed by high school teachers and prominent historians.
P.I.C.A. or Pacific Islander Cultural Association is new to the Web. In the real world P.I.C.A. lives in San Francisco and reflects Samoan, Tongan, and Hawaiian cultures. For environmental studies in this region search on PREL.
Annotation
The experiences in these historical environments can be compared and contrasted with the same settings today to help students understand continuity and change over centuries. Most environmental studies projects focus on short-range changes and scale. These sites provide another perspective on the impact of time. They have received high praise from teachers.
