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Overview
In Time & Place is a growing library of teaching materials for classroom, distance, or home use focusing on selected topics in American history. You will find many traditional reading, map, and photo related resources, but you will also find GIS (Geographic Information System) data and activities as well. All of the materials can be used individually or as a whole to build a unit on each topic in a way that best suits your and your students' needs. There are gentle suggestions in some cases that the materials are well suited to group work or jigsaw type sharing activities. But these are not pre-packaged lessons; rather collections of resources that you can adapt to your style and specific classroom needs.
The GIS activities add four important dimensions to the study of each topic:
• Students are able to put the events involved firmly in place as well as time.
• They are able to investigate and analyze large amounts of place related data - giving an entirely new avenue for understanding historical events.
• GIS software gives students another medium for developing both critical thinking skills and spatial literacy.
• GIS investigations are fun!
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Contents -
East of the CascadesNew
East of the Cascades is an anthology of writings about Oregon east of the Cascade Mountains - its landscape and the life it promised - taken from sources as varied as legends of native American settlers to more recent considerations of the human role in the ecology of the state's most wild places. In addition, it is a collection of photographs - contemporary reflections of the landscapes chronicled by the collected authors. As such the anthology can be engaged on two levels: contemporary landscape photography and social history. The landscape of Oregon east of the Cascades is amazingly beautiful and diverse - very easy to enjoy in its own right. And the variety of historical points of view expressed here is as varied and rich as the landscape itself. |
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Materials focus on the Cherokee removal from the southeastern United States in the 1830s. They provide background on Cherokee culture, the national debate over Indian removal, and accounts of the Trial of Tears itself. |
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Past human behavior and use of the environment in which we live has had a dramatic affect on how we live our lives today just as our use today will help shape the lives of future generations. This unit focuses on broad issues of land use in the Mother Lode region of California. You will examine the historical impact of native American practices and the effects of mining, forestry, agriculture, and the changing demographics in the region. You will study historical documents including letters, diaries, magazine articles, photos, paintings, and maps that will allow you to see how the region's geography has been altered and effected by human interaction. |
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The "national park" idea was born in 1864 when the U.S. Congress granted Yosemite Valley to the state of California to "be held for public use, resort, and recreation; ... inalienable for all time." The materials included here provide an insight into the impressions held by the first visitors to the park, early business people, and by those who fought to preserve the place. |
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The early 20th century battle to dam the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park was national in scope and pitted two sides of the country's new conservation movement against one another. Preservationists, led by John Muir, argued against the dam, Utilitarians, led by Gifford Pinchot, creator of the nation's Forest Service, argued for the dam. The materials in this unit allow students to explore over a century of American ideas about the natural environment, the geology and geography of Hetch Hetchy Valley, its early history, the controversy to build the dam, and, finally, to examine the impact of breaching the dam today. |
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The movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the first three decades of the 20th century is one of the most significant mass migrations in the nation's history. The materials include primary and secondary sources as well as detailed demographic data. |
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The traditional story of the Dust Bowl focuses on the agricultural practices of settlers in a foreign environment. Recent accounts look more closely at climate as the most significant factor in this story. Students will get a chance to explore the issue from both points of view. |
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The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II represents the degree to which racial and cultural intolerance can be carried when mixed with the fear and hysteria of war. The history of the event represented in the documents and activities here is at once a story of immigration, significant constitutional issues, racial discrimination, and the lengthy amalgamation of cultures. |
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The Hanford Nuclear Facility had its origins during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, the United States effort to build an atomic bomb. The reactors at this isolated site in south central Washington state were built to produce plutonium for two of the first three atomic bombs. The success of the project at Hanford came with a price, though. Radioactive gases blew from the reactor stacks and water containing radioactive materials flowed back into the Columbia River after cooling the reactor cores and seeped from various sources into the Hanford soils. The result for many "downwinders" has been a lifetime of radiation related health issues. |
Each unit includes a For the Teacher page that identifies unit objectives, related national social studies and geography standards, references to GIS data sources, and a short bibliography of additional resources. |
Source Materials -
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The materials found in each unit are largely primary sources. As such, the reading level of individual pieces varies dramatically. Many are well suited for average middle school students; a few will be difficult for the best high school readers. In part, the difficulty lies in the use of arcane 19th century language, longer sentences with more complex structure than is commonly used today, and vocabulary that has changed meaning. Brief definitions have been linked into documents as appropriate as the "arcane" example highlighted above suggests.
Be selective. In mixed ability classes not all students have to read the same materials, but all can share their understanding of what they have read as part of class discussion. Challenge students. Reading levels improve with practice with more difficult pieces. |
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GIS Activities -
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GIS assignments are an integral part of the materials in this collection. As you will note in the table below GIS activities can be done online using Google Maps as part of the Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy activities and using ArcGIS Explorer Online for the Downwinder activities. Otherwise, students will need access to either My World GIS, a software package designed for middle and secondary student use, or ArcGIS, a professional GIS software package.
There are introductions to each GIS activity that include detailed examples of using the software in ways that will help students complete the related assignments on their own or with a partner's help. In a classroom setting I would recommend that you use a video projector as you talk through specific software procedures and, more importantly, that you preview the types of analysis in which students will be involved.
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You will need to download the GIS files for each unit from the table below:
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Contact -
Your comments and suggestion about these materials are more than welcome.
If you have ideas for additional topics that would lend themselves to the approach taken here, please pass them along. I'd enjoy collaborating with you.
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