First step is to go to the American Memory website.

You’ll then see a search box with the words “Search all collections” above it.  Enter in “Andrew Jackson” here and click the search button.  You will then get a large list of available items related to Andrew Jackson.

If you’re looking for pictures or other media click on the “Gallery View” button towards the top of the site within the baby blue rectangle.  This will filter out non-media related search items.  This is the quickest way to immediately find some primary sources to work with.  You will now see a table of thumbnails of images you can click on to view.

This way of searching is not simply for pictures either but as you can see from the results, there’s scans of manuscripts and other related items.  It’s really very easy and you can see how quickly you can find primary sources to include in your lesson plans.

Please note, however, that in most cases the pictures fall under the Fair Use, meaning you can use the pictures in your classroom or lessons but not necessary all images are. Please check all copyright restrictions if you’re unsure.

I hope this quick lesson helped you get some quick and initial success in finding things to enhance your teaching.

Andrew Jackson Elected President in 1828 (American Memory) is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

Here at TPS-Colorado, we have a Google account which gives us access to our own Google Reader.  After subscribing to a few website feeds we can then scroll through hundreds and even thousands of articles all related to a certain theme or topic.

A screenshot of our Google Reader page is below, with the folder “Education” clicked on, that shows us all of the articles available to us within.

You can see under the Education folder that there are a variety of sub-headlines.  Each one of these subheadings are individual content feeds from around the web.  Some of them include: The New York Times Education feed, U.S. Department of Education, NPR Topics: Education, and Washington Post Education.  Each one of these are called RSS feeds and can be found directly on their respective related websites.

Now here’s the great part about Google Reader or any RSS reader.  In this example I will focus on the “NPR Topics: Education” feed.  So I click on its name in the left hand column and it displays all the articles within that feed in the main panel.  Screenshot below:

Now each one of these headlines are “clickable” articles with actual content.  I’ll go ahead and open up the article “College Graduates Struggle To Repay Loans”.  We then get this screenshot of the article open and displaying a brief summary of the article, “The abysmal job market is making it hard for some to start making student loan payments, which come due this month for May graduates. A new law could ease the pain for some: It limits monthly payments to 15 percent of a graduate’s income.”:

You can see this is just a summary of the article but where is the full content of the article?  All you have to do is click on the bolded main heading above the summary (“College Graduates Struggle To Repay Loans”) and it will take you to the actual article found on NPR’s website.  Here is what that looks like:

You can then scroll through the entire article.  But this is just the beginning of what Google Reader can do.  In the next screenshot I’ve highlighted what makes Google Reader so powerful:

These options are the social networking features of Google Reader.  First there is the “Add Star” button.  This is the same as bookmarking or adding it your favorites.  Google Reader actually creates a page called “Starred Items” which conglomerates all your starred items into one page for future usage, which is very, very handy.

Next are the “Like”, “Share”, and “Share With Note” options.  These allow you to share items with people who are subscribed to your Google Reader feed.  I will talk about that in another post because it’s a bit more advanced.  Clicking on the “Share” button also updates the HTML website that Google Reader creates for you to share your content across the entire web.  Here is TPS-Colorado’s Google Reader webpage that is updated every time we find an article that we choose to “Share”.

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/tpscolorado

We can then use this URL to share our feed within our blog or on any other website who may want it.  It’s truly an exciting feature.

Next up is “Email”.  Clicking on this opens up a little info box were you enter in the person’s email address you want to send the article to and click send.  Basic, convenient and very powerful.

Another powerful option is the “Send To” feature.  When enabled, this allows you to send the current article to a variety of social networking accounts you may have.  You can have Facebook enabled and click the Send To button, then click on Facebook and it will add it to your Facebook account for your friends and colleagues to read.  I will share how to do that in another blog post as well because it’s in the settings page.

Hopefully you got a rough estimate of what Google Reader can do.  I hope to do a videocast of Google Reader in the future as I can tell it’d be a lot easier to go through the step rather than typing it all out.

If you’re a Google Reader, share with us the ways in which you use it as well.

You can also become a fan of the TPS-Colorado Blog on Facebook.

Are You Using Google Reader Yet? is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

173 years ago today, Sam Houston was elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas. He served from October 22, 1836, to December 10, 1838, and served a second term from December 12, 1841 to December 9, 1844.

After Texas was annexed by the U.S. in 1845, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.  He served from February 21, 1846, until March 4, 1859.

Here is a link to a quick biography of him.

The Library of Congress also has an interesting document from a J. Bovee Dods to Abraham Lincoln recommending Houston be appointed as Secretary of War.  A definite must read.  And since it’s mostly unreadable here’s a transcription of the letter.

I also found a giant presidential campaign poster that features Sam Houston.  His is the bottom picture in the middle of the poster.

Here is another, but a lot longer, primary source on the life of Sam Houston.  From the periodical, “Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art”.  Click on the “view the page images” to see the document.

And another longer primary source which is also a fascinating read.

Here is a rather fun primary source song titled “Sam Houston and The People”.

And finally, a Harper’s Magazine article titled “Last Years of Sam Houston”.

Sam Houston: First President of the Republic of Texas is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

According to the “On This Day” section of The New York Times, in 1860 a girl named Grace Bedell wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln stating that she believed Lincoln could improve his appearance if he grew a beard.

I thought this was interesting story so Keith and I began searching the entire Internet and came across some really interesting primary sources regarding this event.  Our results are below.

Keith immediately went to the Library of Congress and found some direct sources, including the actual letter Grace wrote to Lincoln.

The above link is a snippet from the The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition focusing on his time as a Presidential candidate, titled “Candidate Lincoln.“  On this page you can view Lincoln pre- and with-beard, which is pretty entertaining and interesting.

Here as an easier to read transcription of Grace Bedell’s letter.  But I’ll quote the full thing below.  I love reading the language of Lincoln’s day.

Hon A B Lincoln…

Dear Sir

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can. I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty. I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York.

I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

Followed by Lincoln’s personal reply to the letter.

Springfield, Ill Oct 19, 1860

Miss Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age – They, with their mother, constitute my whole family – As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher

A. Lincoln

ABC News has an interesting article about this story, reported on during President Obama’s Inauguration. Be sure to watch the fascinating video on the page.

There is also a great website called the Grace Bedell Foundation,  that shares the same video as above, without any of the advertisements, as well as a plethora of information about the Grace’s history, Lincoln, and their correspondence.

Below are some additional fun links we found while searching for this post.

A Google Maps view of The Bedell-Lincoln Statue, located in Westfield, NY, which was featured in the video.

A collection of pictures of the statue on Panoramio.

How a Little Girl Grew a Beard and Changed History is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

Below are some primary sources from The Library of Congress regarding the Fire:

A panoramic map showing the burnt district.

Another panoramic picture of the devastated city, titled: The Great Conflagration of Chicago. October 8th and 9th, 1871.

I also found a great first-hand account of the fire.

It was the great fire of 1871 that made me a country peddler. Oh, yes! I remember the fire very well. It was in October. We used to go to bed early, because the two roomers had to go to work very early. We were getting ready to go to bed, when we heard the fire bells ringing. I asked the two men if they wanted to see where the fire was.

“Why should I care where the fire is,” one of the men said. “As long as our house is not on fire, I don’t care what house is burning. There is a fire every Monday and Thursday in Chicago.”

But I wanted to see the fire. So I went out into the street. I saw the flames across the river. But I thought that since the river was between the fire and our house, there was nothing to worry about. I went into the house and went to bed.

The next thing I knew my two bed-fellows were shaking me. “Get up,” they cried. “The whole city is on fire! Save your things! We are going to Lincoln Park.”

I jumped out of bed and pulled on my pants. Everybody in the house was trying to save as much as possible. I tied my clothes in a sheet. With my clothes under my arm and my pack on my back, I left the house with the rest of the family. Everybody was running north. People were carrying all kinds of crazy things. A woman was carrying a pot of soup, which was spilling all over her dress. People were carrying cats, dogs and goats. In the great excitement people saved worthless things and left behind good things. I saw a woman carrying a big frame in which was framed her wedding veil and wreath. She said it would have been bad luck to leave it behind.

No one slept that night. People gathered on the streets and all kinds of reasons were given for the fire. I stood near a minister. He was talking to a group of men. He said the fire was sent by God as a warning that the people were wicked. He said there were too many saloons in Chicago. There were too many houses of prostitution. A woman who heard this said that since the fire started in a barn it was a direct warning from God. She said Jesus was also born in a barn. I talked to a man who lived next door to Mrs. O’Leary, and he told me that the fire started in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn. She went out to milk the cow when it was begining to get dark. She took a lamp with her and the cow kicked the lamp over and that’s how the fire started.

According to the website The Chicago Fire, the cause of the epic fire was started by a cow knocking over a lit lantern, igniting Mr. and Mrs. Patrick and Catherine O’Leary’s barn, which quickly spread throughout the city.

Historians agree that on Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, the Chicago Fire did indeed start in the barn of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. While the blaze ironically spared the O’Leary home, located on the city’s West Side at 137 De Koven Street, much of the rest of Chicago was not so fortunate. Before the fire died out in the early morning of Tuesday, October 10, it had cut a swath through Chicago approximately three and one-third square miles in size. Property valued at $192,000,000 was destroyed, 100,000 people were left homeless, and 300 people lost their lives.

Interestingly, this may be an urban legend, however.

I also found another great resource detailing the Fire at the Chicago History Museum’s website.  It has many great illustrations and first-hand accounts of the event.  The website also has additional information regarding what may be the true account regarding the story that the cow caused the initial spark.

On top of this, on the fortieth anniversary of the great conflagration a police reporter named Michael Ahern, who was working for the Chicago Republican at the time of the fire, boasted in the Tribune that he and two now-deceased cronies made the whole thing up.

After two years of rebuilding and recovery, Chicago became host to the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the The Chicago World’s Fair.  The city had finally fully recovered from the devastating fire.

Today in History: Chicago Fire of 1871 is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

Hey, everybody.  Todd here, writing a small post on the 40th anniversary of landing on the Moon.  I was able to take the time and find some really great links that you might like to checkout if you’re interested in the topic.  I found some really incredible sites that are well done and provide some fascinating information.  I also wanted to point how easy it is to find some quality information in just a short amount of time.  So for those people that say that they just don’t have enough time…well, it only took me 20 minutes to find all the information for this post and about an hour to write it up.  Not too bad, I’d say.  Here we go.

Forty years ago, yesterday, July 16th, was the launch of the Apollo 11 mission to land a human on the surface of the Moon for the first time in recorded history.

Four days later, on July 20th, Neil Armstrong first stepped down on the surface and uttered his famous words.  Here is a link to many videos of this incident I found on NASA’s History website. Pretty cool videos on there.

Probably my favorite resource I came across is the We Choose the Moon site.  Basically it’s a website that’s recreating, in real time, the 5 days of the Apollo Moon landing.  It’s constantly updating with radio transmissions and countdown timers to the event.  It also features the Apollo 11 flight path and Twitter feeds of both the spacecraft and Capcom, being updated in real-time as the mission happened.  It’s really an amazing website that you won’t regret checking out.

Here is the official NASA website of Apollo 11’s 40th Anniversary.  Also has some great information.

NASA’s own photo gallery.

A Flickr group with some excellent pictures of the event.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum coverage of the event.  Also a great tool with some great videos and imagery.

Here is the front page and article in The New York times from July 21st, 1969, the day after the landing.

And here is a current article by John Noble Wilford, who wrote the front page article, reminiscing about the event.  Another really fascinating read.

A map of the astronauts path taken on the moon.  As seen on Google Moon.

A photoblog by Daniel J. Wakin of people watching the launch.

A map of the Moon from the Library of Congress.  Officially called a lunar reference mosaic.

And there you have it.  A few quality links to places all over the internet celebrating the monumental event and which didn’t take that long at all to find.

Big thanks to Leslie and Keith for finding a few of them. 

Thanks for reading.

–Todd

40th Anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

So today as I did my daily Internet surf, I came across a supreme example of Wordle in action from NPR’s website.  Now, we’ve all heard about the recent troubles in Iran regarding their election and the events following it and while I want to avoid any type of political/religious debate here on the blog, I still think it’s an important topic, if not for the simple fact it’s the biggest current news story.  Anyway, Andy Carvin of NPR used words from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mir Houssein Mousavi during their recent speeches to contrast their two opposing agendas:

While watching the Iran protests play out online, I thought it would be interesting to map out some of the words being used on each side of the debate. I took recent statements from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, then ran them through the word mapping tool Wordle.net. The results show the 100 most commonly used words by each.

Click here to see his results.

It’s really interesting to see the words of the two political oppositions in a striking, visual format.  It gives a quick and painless method of analysis into the two speeches and the two wildly different sides they represent.

Let us know if you’ve ever used Wordle in your teaching methods or are now interested because of this post. 

–Todd

Great Example of Primary Sources is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

Thanks for checkin’ in on us!

Welcome to the new TPS-Colorado Blog is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

Paris, Washington D.C.—The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and 32 partner institutions today launched the World Digital Library, a website that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The site―located at www.wdl.org―includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints and photographs. It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

The World Digital Library functions in seven languages―Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish―and includes content in more than 40 languages. Browse and search features facilitate cross-cultural and cross-temporal exploration on the site. Descriptions of each item and videos, with expert curators speaking about selected items, provide context for users and are intended to spark curiosity and encourage both students and the general public to learn more about the cultural heritage of all countries.

One of UNESCO’s main mandates is to promote the free flow of all forms of knowledge in education, science, culture and communication. The organization therefore promotes education, research and exchanges through the improved and increased availability of content on the Internet. To this end, it collaborates with a number of partners on the creation of digital and other repositories.

It’s a really great site that just got off the ground and I’m really looking forward to whatever else they add to it.

The World Digital Library is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog

So when I heard recently that two submarines had collided in the middle of the ocean, my curiosity was piqued like the “good ole’ days” of my youth.  **At the end of this post are articles linking to information about this most recent incident.

While in the process of garnering inspiration for this post, I happened upon a link of related events that took place on this day. Imagine my surprise when listed close to the top was the headline “The H. L. Hunley becomes the first submarine to engage and sink a warship, the USS Housatonic.”

According to the Naval Historical Center, The Hunley was built in 1863 by Park and Lyons of Mobile, Alabama, and was fashioned out of a

cylindrical iron steam boiler, which was deepened and also lengthened through the addition of tapered ends. Hunley was designed to be hand powered by a crew of nine: eight to turn the hand-cranked propeller and one to steer and direct the boat. As a true submarine, each end was equipped with ballast tanks that could be flooded by valves or pumped dry by hand pumps. Extra ballast was added through the use of iron weights bolted to the underside of the hull. In the event the submarine needed additional buoyancy to rise in an emergency, the iron weight could be removed by unscrewing the heads of the bolts from inside the vessel.

I found some more information about the ship on the Encyclopedia of Alabama website:

The Hunley was the third submarine vessel to be constructed under the direction of riverboat captain James McClintock, engineer Baxter Watson, and lawyer Horace Lawson Hunley, whom the boat was eventually named after. The first submarine, Pioneer, was constructed in New Orleans in late 1861 and early 1862. It was tested in the Mississippi River in February 1862 and was later taken to Lake Pontchartrain for further testing. It had to be scuttled in April when Union admiral David Farragut’s fleet advanced upon the city of New Orleans.

Feel free to click the article’s link for a detailed account of the ship and it’s building process.

On February 14th, the Hunley made a daring and ambitious late night attack on the:

USS Housatonic, a 1,240-ton (B) sloop-of-war with 16 guns, in Charleston Harbor off the coast of South Carolina. H.L. Hunley rammed Housatonic with spar torpedo packed with explosive powder and attached to a long pole on its bow. The spar torpedo embedded in the sloop’s wooden side was detonated by a rope as Hunley backed away. The resulting explosion that sent Housatonic with five crew members to the bottom of Charleston Harbor also sank Hunley with its crew of eight. H.L. Hunley earned a place in the history of undersea warfare as the first submarine to sink a ship in wartime.

Here is a authentic map of Charleston Harbor circa 1864, from the Library of Congress (thanks to Keith):

Map of Charleston Harbor

The crew of eight lay in the ship for 131 years, until the author Clive Cussler and his team from the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) discovered the submarine after a 14 years of searching:

At the time of discovery, Cussler and NUMA were conducting this research in partnership with the South Carolina Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology (SCIAA). The team realized that they had found Hunley after exposing the forward hatch and the ventilator box (the air box for the attachment of a snorkel). The submarine rested on its starboard side at about a 45-degree angle and is covered in a 1/4 to 3/4-inch encrustation of ferrous oxide bonded with sand and shell particles. Archaeologists exposed a little more on the port side and found the bow dive plane on that side. More probing revealed an approximate length of 34 feet with most, if not all, of the vessel preserved under the sediment.

After searching further for more information about the recovery of the ship, I came across an interesting article from the official website of the U.S. Navy.  In it, it talks about the finding of a wallet of one of the Hunley’s crewmembers.

“There are endless possibilities on what kind of information this wallet may hold,” said Paul Mardikian, senior conservator on the Hunley project. “It is just too difficult to imagine that someone would carry a wallet with nothing in it.” In the past, Mardikian has worked on wallets recovered from the Titanic which held documents, currency and business cards.

The wallet was found near a crew member’s shoulder bone, which means he possibly carried it in his jacket pocket. Any information the wallet may hold will add to personal details about the crew, which are starting to emerge as a result of ongoing forensic and genealogical research.

Again from the Encyclopedia of Alabama article linked above:

During the conservation, the remains of the eight crewman were recovered, and all were found in their assigned positions onboard the vessel, suggesting that there was no panic at the time the boat went down. The reason for the submarine’s sinking after its attack on the Housatonic remains a mystery. There is some evidence to suggest that the men did not drown, but rather suffocated from lack of oxygen, and that the Hunley may have remained airtight for some 30 years after the attack on the Housatonic.

On April 17, 2004, the men were buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston next to the other crewmen who had drowned on the submarine some 140 years earlier. The Hunley remains at the Warren Lasch Conservatory at present, and visitors can view the submarine on weekend tours. The building that housed the Park and Lyons Machine Shop still stands on the corner of Water and State streets in Mobile.

See why I like submarines? Not only are they interesting in and of themselves, but they have a rich history that dates all the way back to the Civil War. And plus, no one ever talks about them in their history class. Sure, they talk about The Monitor and The Merrimack with regards to naval events of the Civil War, but rarely do you hear about submarine warfare during this time.

Am I wrong about this?  I will admit I haven’t taken a Civil War class past the high school level.  How often does the topic of submarines come up?

Please met me know. 

–Todd

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nuclear Submarine Collision Reported (nytimes.com)
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• Two submarines and a stroke of bad luck (guardian.co.uk)

Submarines are Cool! is a post from: Teaching with Primary Sources-Colorado Blog