Teaching the Civil War with Technology

The National Park Service has created a series of lesson plans known as Teaching with Historic Places and one of those historic places is Gettysburg. Choices and Commitments: The Soldiers at Gettysburg is one such lesson plan.

This lesson plan starts with an inquiry question that asks the students to examine a photo of the Trostle Farm littered with dead horses and debris.

The Trostle Farm circa July 6, 1863 — Alexander Gardner photo

The lesson then presents the events leading up to the battle and has the students locate information on a few maps. The lesson presents some great readings on events that occurred with accompanying discussion discussion questions for the students to consider. The lesson contains three activities for the teacher to use with their students, each with a different perspective on the battle.

Finally, the Supplementary Resources of the lesson provides links to some excellent digital resource centers such as the Valley of the Shadow Project.

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During the 140th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, noted Civil War historian James McPherson gave some tours of the battlefield. Part of one of these tours is available as an audio file from the NPR website along with an accompanying article and two photo galleries.

This is a good opportunity for teachers to bring a subject matter expert into your classroom to see how they “do history”. Using the accompanying photo galleries and primary sources from digital resource centers like the Library of Congress, students can listen to the 15 minute audio commentary and view the location using photos, maps and other images.

Enjoy.

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The Gettysburg Discussion Group (GDG) has some great articles on the opening day of the Battle of Gettysburg. I’m particularly fond of the discussion on the area known as Oak Ridge because the 11th PVI and Sallie their mascot fought there before retreating through town to the safety of Cemetery Hill.

Check out the GDG discussion on day one at : http://www.gdg.org/Research/Authored%20Items/july1.html

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The U.S. Army has created an excellent website related to the Battle of Gettysburg.

When you click the Launch Battle button it takes you to a multimedia presentation of the events leading up the to battle. In addition to the spoken narrative, there are also numerous pictures of the famous Civil War era individuals, maps, and other primary sources. The introduction then leads into a timeline for each of the days of the battle mixing an multimedia map with text and photographs.

At the bottom portion of the screen, you have the option to select different specific information related to the battle. They are Profiles, Weaponry, Statistics, Epilogue, and Resources and each contains a wealth of information.

For example, if you click on Profiles, it provides you with an Overview and then you can click on any of the photos of the individuals at the bottom of the page such as John Burns, Jenny Wade or Confederate Private Wesley Culp who died on his family’s farm on Culp’s Hill. After reading the stories, have your students imagine that they lived in Gettysburg when the Confederates arrived or produce a newspaper article about the invasion.

The Statistics section can easily be integrated into a math lesson to compare and contrast the number of soldiers killed and wounded from different wars. While the Epilogue section contains some great information about the aftermath of the battle.

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Hi,

Just a quick link today to show you this video called The Civil War in Four Minutes.

I’m off to the National Educational Computing Conference where I will be presenting a poster session on Using Technology to Teach the Civil War and Sarah will be presenting Civil War Sallie as part of the Student Showcase.

I hope to pick up some ideas while I am there for more posts and discussions.

Enjoy…

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