Teaching the Civil War with Technology

Discovering the Civil War Online – Live Webcast from American Public University
Best practices and tips from the experts for researching original Civil War documents online

Have you ever handled a document over 150 years old? The American Civil War left behind a vast paper trail of soldiers’ letters and diaries, as well as newspapers and periodicals; all of these documents provide accounts of crucial events of the era, enabling historians to piece together the events that shaped America’s past during this defining time.

Join American Public University on March 3^rd from 11am-12pm as two authors, Dr. Steven E. Woodworth and Tom Daccord, will discuss researching and handling original Civil War documents through the Internet and how they apply it to their own projects.

Learn More (URL: http://www.studyatapu.com/web-cast/history/civil-war/)

Posted under Miscellaneous

The National Civil War Museum here in Harrisburg is a great place to visit to see all of the wonderful artifacts and exhibits.  Well, from February 6th to the 20th, it will also be a great time to visit and talk to a living historian who will be experiencing life as a Civil War soldier.

In order to raise money and awareness for the education department of the museum Brett Kelly, the museum’s curator, will be  spending two weeks of his vacation time living the life of a Civil War picket soldier.  He will be living on the grounds of the museum, living on rations, wearing the clothes, eating the hardtack and basically living the life of a soldier.  All the money raised from this initiative will go directly to the Museum’s education department to purchase reproduction equipment for school and public group presentations, develop the summer speaking program and also to develop a distance learning system to reach school groups unable to visit the Museum.

While on duty, Brett will be performing some of the duties that a typical soldier would have done including spending time on picket duty, building some winter quarters and wooden defenses.  In addition to this, Brett will also be carrying out several ten mile marches to raise awareness of the Museum.

Thanks to the help of local history teacher Jeff Mummert (check out his blog) and his students, Brett will be able to share his experience with the world via the Internet.  Brett’s daily journal, photographs and videos by museum staff, will be posed to various social networking sites like a blog, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  If your school blocks these types of services, this is a great way for you to show how they can be used for educational purposes to benefit your students.

Brett’s blog,  Civil War Soldier 24/7, will allow teachers and students to follow his experiences from day to day.  Also, be sure to follow @cwsoldier24_7 on Twitter.  If you have a Facebook account, you can become a fan of The National Civil War Museum page.  Finally, be sure to subscribe to their YouTube channel.  Thanks to all the hard work by Jeff’s students!

Finally, I’m working with the museum to see if Civil War Sallie can visit and to possibly have Brett do a follow up webinar for students in order to describe his experiences.  Stay tuned for more information.  Here are links to read about Civil War Sallie’s visits to the museum:  Part 1 and Part 2

Please spread the word about this exciting event and if you are in Harrisburg during that time, stop by and say hello to Brett.

Until next time, stay warm.

Posted under Miscellaneous

As many of you already know, Google has begun to scan and make books available online, including full versions of books. These books are copyright free and can be downloaded for your reading pleasure.

In addition to these books, there are also some books where the copyright has not expired, however you can read sample pages from the book. Not free to download, but nice to “try before you buy.”

So, for example, a quick search for the word “Gettysburg” and you get a list of books of some really interesting looking texts such as:

• Gettysburg: Description of the Painting of the Repulse of Longstreet’s Assault by John Badger Bachelder – 1870
• Gettysburg Made Plain: A Succinct Account of the Campaign and Battles, by Abner Doubleday – 1888
• The Attack and Defense of Little Round Top, Gettysburg, July 2, 1863 by Oliver Willcox Norton – 1913
• Did General Meade Desire to Retreat at the Battle of Gettysburg? by George Meade – 1883
• Hospital Scenes After the Battle of Gettysburg, July, 1863 by Patriot Daughters of Lancaster (Pa.) – 1864

There are also numerous autobiographies and biographies of Civil War Generals that are also available for download. Try searching for Civil War or Civil War general and see what you come up with.

Finally, Google Books also has a feature where you can find a library near you that has a copy of a particular book, and for you researchers out there, a “cite this item” link which gives you the proper citation for a book for publishing purposes is given in several different formats .(APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA and Turabian.

Try it at http://books.google.com especially the “full view books.”

In addition to Google Books, you may also want to try searching the following websites for Civil War books:

http://www.archive.org and http://books.live.com

and

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

Happy Reading.

Posted under Miscellaneous

Hello Everyone,

Just a note to say that I’ve been nominated for a 2009 EduBlog Award as the Best Resource Sharing Blog.

I would greatly appreciate it if you take a moment to vote for my blog I would greatly appreciate it.

While you are there, Civil War Sallie has also been nominated for the Best Student Blog.

Posted under Miscellaneous

The Edublog Awards 2009 are open for nomination!

This is a chance for educators to nominate and celebrate the achievements of edubloggers, twitterers, podcasters, video makers, online communities, wiki hosts and other web based users of educational technology.

Here are the categories, I would like to nominate the following individuals:

• Best individual blog — Speaking of History by Eric Langhorst
• Best new blog — Civil War Sallie by Sarah Beeghley
• Best student blog — Civil War Sallie by Sarah Beeghley
• Best resource sharing blog — A Blog Divided by Dickinson College
• Best educational wiki – Web 2.0 Guru by Cheryl Capozzoli

Best sure to The Edublog Awards 2009 website to see all of the nominees and winners!

Posted under Miscellaneous