Teaching the Civil War with Technology

Here is something cool you can do with your students. Have them take modern photos and make them look old. For example, here is a photo that I took of some friends of mine from Sykes Regulars.

You can then take the photograph and put it into your favorite photo editor such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or GiMP.

Once you have it in your editor, start playing with the tone to make it look black & white using a sepia tone filter and then next you will want to blur the edges to give it that slightly unfocused look. Play with different filters to see the different effects they have on the image.

Now for some more advanced edits. If you know how to create layers in your editor, you could take the background from an old photograph and place the modern photo (that you have just revised) on top to give you the rough edges of the photo. This would require you to select a portion of the modern photo and then paste it on top of the new layer.

Here is what the revised image might look like:

Let me know what you come up with.

Posted under Lesson Ideas

According to John Busey’s “These Honored Dead: The Union Casualties at Gettysburg”, the following is a list of the number of soldiers killed during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Army Of the Potomac :

New York	978
Pennsylvania	745
Massachusetts	200
Michigan	200
US Regulars	182
Ohio	139
Maine	119
Wisconsin	105
Indiana	96
New Jersey	80
New Hampshire	67
Vermont	58
Minnesota	50
Connecticut	45
Maryland	29
Delaware	21
Rhode Island	14
West Virginia	11
Illinois	9
Total	3,148

Army of Northern Virginia:

North Carolina	1452
Virginia	1012
Georgia	774
Mississippi	393
South Carolina	295
Alabama	254
Louisiana	141
Texas	111
Florida	80
Maryland	65
Tennessee	55
Arkansas	41
Total	4,673

Total number killed: 7,821

Based on these figures, you can easily have your students working on some math concepts. Have your students answer questions such as:

• What is the average number of soldiers killed for both the North and the South?
• What percentage of the total number of soldiers killed were from Ohio?
• What percentage of those killed were from the South?
• How many more soldiers were killed from North Carolina versus Pennsylvania?

Or, how about some critical thinking skills…

• Why do you think New York and North Carolina had the highest number of soldiers killed?
• During what day of the battle do you think Minnesota lost the greatest number of soldiers and why?

Until next time. From just north of Gettysburg…

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Primary Sources

Well, I’m not a statistician by any means and I even struggled with the stats for my dissertation. But for some reason, I have quite a few blog posts on statistics. So, why not one more:

The following tables are the number of Union and Confederate soldiers who were killed, wounded or captured during the Gettysburg Campaign. These figures are adapted from Fox’s Regimental Losses on the Civil War Home website.

The following shows the total Killed and Wounded for both Union and Confederates:

UNION
July 1 Killed — 950

July 1 Wounded — 4,550

July 1 Total – 5500

July 2 Killed — 1500

July 2 Wounded — 7,250

July 2 Total – 8,750

July 3 Killed — 705

July 3 Wounded — 2,745

July 3 Total – 3,450

Total Killed — 3,155
Total Wounded –14,529
Total Killed and Wounded– 17,684

CONFEDERATE
July 1 Killed — 900

July 1 Wounded — 4,350

July 1 Total – 5,250

July 2 Killed — 1,175

July 2 Wounded — 5,325

July 2 Total – 6500

July 3 Killed — 1,425

July 3 Wounded — 5,575

July 3 Total – 7000

Total Killed — 3,500
Total Wounded –15,250
Total Killed and Wounded– 18,750

By Location on the Battlefield:

Wheat-Field: Union Losses 4,133 Confederate Losses 2,822

Emmittsburg Road: Union Losses 2,645 Confederate Losses 1,978

Peach Orchard: Union Losses 1,285 Confederate Losses 1,047

Round Top: Union Losses 575 Confederate Losses 826

Total: Union Losses 8,638 Confederate Losses 6,673

So, lets start asking some questions:

• What percentage were killed on the first day of the Battle?
• What percentage of the Union losses occurred in the Peach Orchard?
• Why were Union causalities lower on July 3rd?
• What percentage of Confederates were wounded on July 2nd?

And the questions could go on and on…

Until next…enjoy the statistics !

Posted under Lesson Ideas, Miscellaneous

The following post is from Dawn Crawford, a training specialist with netTrekker.

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One of my favorite memories from middle school is a family trip to Gettysburg.  I will never get the memorials and stories at the battlefield out of my head – great stuff!  The trip and pictures from the trip would have so much more meaning if I could supplement them with additional knowledge of the different pieces of that famous event.

The Civil War Era resources found in netTrekker d.i. span over 100 topics from Abolition to Ziegler’s Grove in the form of interactive media, lesson plans, learning games, primary source documents, videos, pictures, maps and much more. These resources can be accessed by individual students or for whole class instruction.

I login to netTrekker d.i., click on the Middle School tab, drill down into the Social Studies topic area, select U.S. History then Civil War Era OR I can enter the keyword phrase “Civil War” and click Search.  From these 1000+ resources, it is very simple to see only the types of activities I want to use by using the different Refinement menus.  Soon I am finding resources that take me back to that great family trip to Gettysburg.

netTrekker d.i. has nearly 300 Civil War resources catalogued in the Elementary section, over 1000 Civil War resources catalogued in the Middle School section and over 1000 Civil War resources catalogued in the High School section.  With this amazing selection of resources I am sure that I can get my students as excited about learning about Gettysburg as I still am!

Posted under Lesson Ideas

Jennifer Dorman (aka cliotech) has posted a brief survey about how to use Discovery Education Streaming to teach the Civil War.  Please take a moment to CHECK OUT THE SURVEY and let her know how you are using DE Streaming to teach the Civil War.

Then, go check out the results of the survey.

Until next time…. Go Steelers!

Posted under Miscellaneous