Oh, gee, we’re running late: The National History Day competition live webcast is this morning. Go here: http://www.history.com/classroom/nhd/
National History Day live webcast – June 18, 2009
June 18, 2009
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Typewriter of the moment: Steve Allen
June 17, 2009I miss Steve Allen. I miss “Meeting of Minds.” I miss finding out what Allen would be up to next.
Steve Allen at his typewriter, well before 1999
An Olivetti electric? Anyone know for sure?
Steve Allen invented “The Tonight Show” on NBC, and was its first host. It would have been great to have heard his opinion of Jay Leno’s leaving, and Conan O’Brien’s taking over.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Typewriter of the moment: Theodore Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill
June 11, 2009He held many jobs, cowboy, police commissioner, governor, military leader, president — but he regarded his profession as “writer.”
Theodore Roosevelt‘s typewriter, a Remington, from his house at Sagamore Hill, New York:
Theodore Roosevelt’s typewriter from his home at Sagamore Hill, New York – Fish and Wildlife Service photo, National Digital Image Library (public domain)
Update, March 16, 2012: There are two versions of the same photo above, if we’re lucky. The designator at the National Digital Library has changed at least twice, leaving this post high and dry. There is another, slightly lower quality version of the photo above. You’re not seeing double, you’re seeing operational redundancy.
Resources:
- For teachers especially, from the Theodore Roosevelt Association: Lesson plans on the life of Theodore Roosevelt, for grades 5 through 12.
- Links to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota) from the Theodore Roosevelt Association
- National Park Service site for Theodore Roosevelt National Park
- Biography of Theodore Roosevelt at the White House website
Please share this image and information:
7 Comments | History, History images, Invention, Journalism, Presidents, Technology, Theodore Roosevelt, Typewriters | Tagged: History, History images, Invention, Presidents, Sagamore Hill, Technology, Theodore Roosevelt, Typewriters | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
New blog from the Texas Historical Commission
June 8, 2009Texas Parlor notes that the Texas Historical Commission has gotten into the blog business, with a blog called See the Sites.
New logo and slogan for the Texas Historical Commission
A lot of photos from the sites the Historical Commission operates, news of special events, and links to the Commission’s sites’ websites. As yet there are not any substantive historical analyses.
The new blog accompanies a redesign of the Texas Historical Commission’s website, and the creation of a new logo for the agency, with a new slogan.
The new website makes navigation a good bit easier, to get to information about cemeteries, or the LaSalle Projects, Texas’s remarkable collection of county courthouses, Civil War monuments, or any of a number of other categories.
Historians begin to make the internet a real tool for education and learning, and the practice of history recording.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Will’s Texas Parlor, a site every Texas history teacher should have bookmarked, and should visit often.
Leave a Comment » | History, History and art, History images, History museums, Internet, Technology, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: blogs, History, Museums, Texas, Texas Historical Commission | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
HippoCampus: Technology’s promise shows
May 28, 2009Teachers, are you using HippoCampus? (Tell us about it in comments if you are.)
Topics with lesson plans and great support material:
Algebra
HippoCampus is a product of the Monterey Institute, a part of the University of California system.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
May 22, 1906: Patent to Wright Bros. for “flying machine”
May 23, 2009In a drawer in a file box in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., is a study in black ink on white paper, lines that resemble those images most of us have of the first Wright Bros. flyer, usually dubbed “Kittyhawk” after the place it first took to the air.
Drawing 1 from patent granted to Orville Wright for a flying machine
The patent was issued on May 22, 1906, to Orville Wright, Patent No. 821393, for a “flying machine.”
It makes more sense if you turn the drawing on its side.
Wright Bros. flying machine, from patent drawing
Why did it take three years to get the patent issued?
Below the fold, the rest of the patent.
1 Comment | Airplanes, DBQ sources, Historic documents, History, History images, Images, Invention, Patents, Science, Technology | Tagged: Airplane, Aviation, Flying, Historic documents, History, History images, May 22 1906, Patents, Science, Technology, Wright Brothers | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A vision of students, today (thanks, Bug Girl!)
April 30, 2009Bug Girl put this up, and you can watch it there and comment on it there in a lively and informative discussion, but it’s just too good not to show here:
Teachers, show it to your colleagues, and especially to your librarians and your administrators.
Students, show it to your teachers.
And, go thou and do likewise.
.
.
.
Oh, and note that Bug Girl’s post was a year ago.
Other stuff to see:
- Blogsite of the Digital Ethnography class at KSU (mentioned in the film)
- While we’re on the topic, look at “Web 2.0,” especially if you’re confused by things like Wikipedia
4 Comments | Education, Learning, Pedagogy, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: Classroom technology, Classrooms, Education, Learning, Teaching, Technology, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
California unemployment map, for economics classrooms
March 20, 2009The Sacramento Bee, one of America’s great newspapers which we hope can stay in business through these tough times, today put up a map of California unemployment, county by county. The map shows unemployment changes over the past year with an interactive slide that makes it great for classroom use in economics, but makes it impossible for me to embed here (it’s in Adobe Flash).
California’s unemployment is at about 11% statewide. Colusa County’s unemployment is 26.6%. Two counties away, in Marin County, it’s only 6.8%
California economics classes can use their knowledge of agriculture and industry in the state to make educated guesses about what is going on in each county. Surely there are uses the rest of us can find. Colusa and Imperial Counties are two of the hardest hit — with the internet, can your students tell what that is going to mean for prices on fresh produce and processed foods?
This is where computers and the internet step out ahead in the education tilts, with tools like this interactive map. Thank you, SacBee. Can you give teachers a download?
Here’s another set of maps, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: map-of-unemployment-nationally-january-2009- Another unusual unemployment map, below. From The Swordpress
Another unemployment map, national, for December 2008, The Swordpress
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Worldwide Web – 20 years ago, March 13
March 14, 2009Almost missed this one: The Web traces its birth to a meeting 20 years ago, on March 13. Details at Daily Wireless.org.
Quaint drawings, no?
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Posted by Ed Darrell
One view to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
March 10, 20091600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It sounds like a number Fred Waring’s Glenn Miller’s band could shout out at the end of instrumental verses. It’s the street address of the White House, not so secretly, and to most fans or other followers of politics, it carries great symbolism.
So a professor at the University of Akron thought it would be a good name for a blog. It is. The blog is a very good compilation of sources and intriguing commentary.
This item caught my eye yesterday — the least tawdry dealing with this issue I’ve seen in a long time, though some of the portraits pointed to are more impressionistic than history. The listing alone reveals a lot. It’s incomplete, of course. This is the one post probably not suitable for 8th grade U.S. history; it’s already come up in my government classes this year.
Check out the stuff in the widgets — the link to the current WhiteHouse.gov feed is a good idea, cool, and by its mere existence, an indicator of the influence of technology on politics.
I’m curious to know how one might use this blog in the classroom. Got ideas?
1 Comment | Government, History, President Obama, Presidents, Technology, Weblogs, White House | Tagged: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, History, Marital Iinfidelity, Politics, Presidents, Weblogs, White House | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
National History Day film on DDT
March 8, 2009Student production from 2008:
The film’s credits say it was done by Michael Seltzer — it’s rather obviously a student production, but there is also a Dr. Michael Seltzer active in environmental protection. Are they related?
Best I can tell is that this documentary didn’t win any national awards. If the non-winners are this good, I wonder what the winners look like?
Why aren’t all the winners posted on the website of the National History Day organization, or on YouTube?
1 Comment | DDT, History, Politics, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, Student projects, Technology, Video and film | Tagged: DDT, Environmental protection, History, Politics, Rahel Carson, Research, Science, Student projects, Technology, Video and film | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Abraham Lincoln, inventor
February 24, 2009Any visitor to Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello knows of Jefferson’s wide-ranging interests, and work in science and invention. I was rather surprised to discover the depth of George Washington’s inventive work, in a seminar sponsorred by the Bill of Rights Institute at Mount Vernon a few years ago.
Abraham Lincoln, too?
Lincoln lived along the Sangamon River, and he saw development of the river for commercial navigation to be a boon for his district’s economic growth. Unfortunately, the Sangamon is not deep; boats had difficult times navigating over the many logs and snags, and shallows.
So, Mr. Lincoln offered a technical solution, for which he was granted a patent in 1849. Details below, from Google Patents:
lincoln-patent-for-buoying_vessels_over_shoals
4 Comments | Abraham Lincoln, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Historic documents, History, Invention, Patents, Science, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
David Bergman’s gigapan photo of the inauguration
February 3, 2009Can’t embed the photo here. Panoramic photos are cool things to use to capture history. Photographer David Bergman made a colossal, 1,464 megapixel photo of the inauguration of Barack Obama — you gotta see it.
Bergman described it:
I made a panoramic image showing the nearly two million people who watched President Obama’s inaugural address. To do so, I clamped a Gigapan Imager to the railing on the north media platform about six feet from my photo position. The Gigapan is a robotic camera mount that allows me to take multiple images and stitch them together, creating a massive image file.
My final photo is made up of 220 Canon G10 images and the file is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels. It took more than six and a half hours for the Gigapan software to put together all of the images on my Macbook Pro and the completed TIF file is almost 2 gigabytes.
Bergman is offering prints for sale.
Were you at the inauguration, on the Capitol grounds? Check Bergman’s photo, and zoom in to see whether you can see yourself in history.
A smaller version of Bergman’s GigaPan photo of the inauguration of Barack Obama; go see the zoomable version at Bergman’s site, and marvel at the detail of faces
3 Comments | Barack Obama, History, History images, Images, President Obama, Presidents, Technology | Tagged: David Bergman, GigaPan, History, Images, Obama's Inauguration, Panoramic Photo, Technology, U.S. Capitol | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Let there be light: January 27, anniversary of bright idea
January 29, 2009Oops, missed this anniversary date!
First page of patent granted to Thomas Edison on January 27, 1880 -- for light bulb
Thomas Alva Edison got a patent for “electric-lamp” on January 27, 1880.
According to the Our Documents site:
In 1878 the creation of a practical long-burning electric light had eluded scientists for decades. With dreams of lighting up entire cites, Edison lined up financial backing, assembled a group of brilliant scientists and technicians, and applied his genius to the challenge of creating an effective and affordable electric lamp. With unflagging determination, Edison and his team tried out thousands of theories, convinced that every failure brought them one step closer to success. On January 27, 1880, Edison received the historic patent embodying the principles of his incandescent lamp that paved the way for the universal domestic use of electric light.
(Information excerpted from American Originals by Stacey Bredhoff; [Seattle and London; The University of Washington Press, 2001] p. 62–63.
Our Documents grew out of the National Archives list of 100 milestone documents important to American history — Edison’s patent application was voted one of the top 100. Our Documents is now a joint exercise combining the efforts of the National Archives, National History Day, and USA Freedom Corps.
Page from Edison's application for patent for an "electric lamp" - National Archives
10 Comments | 100 Milestone Documents of U.S. History, DBQ sources, Government, Historic documents, History, History images, Invention, Technology, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: 100 Mileston Documents of U.S. History, 1880, Historic documents, History, Light Bulb, Patents, Technology, Thomas Edison | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Flash media, animation and movies for your classroom
January 28, 2009I’m struggling. I’m looking for software that will allow me to make animations and movies for classroom use. I know very little about it, though, and I’m not sure where to look.
I stumbled on this site, from the University of Houston, Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling.
Do me a favor: Social studies teachers, especially hop over there and look at the video/animation/presentations they offer — on the Dustbowl, on human rights and Nobel winner Aung San Suu Kyi, on Hiroshima, the race to the Moon, and other stuff. Look at the presentations: Can you use them? Do you have better stuff to use?
Other examples include mathematics, art (some of which might also be good for history), English as a Second Language (ESL), language arts, and other subjects.
Do you make movies or animations for your classroom? What do you use?
What does a teacher need to get started in digital story telling?
The UH site offers a free download of Microsoft Photo Story 3 — have you used it? Good stuff? What’s your experience?
3 Comments | Classroom management, Classroom technology, Education, Education quality, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Video and film | Tagged: Classroom management, Education, Education Automation, film, Technology in the classroom, video | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 