Your community may be rich in its own history. Who were its earliest settlers? Who came next? How did they have an impact on your area?
Think of the buildings, parks, schools, streets, rivers, etc. that are named after the people who were an influence in your community's past. Was it an explorer, a President, a famous general, Native Americans, a King, or a group of people from a foreign country who first settled your area? What were their goals? Who were their adversaries, if any? Who controlled the land? Did the control shift to other groups?
Perhaps your own school is named after a famous person in your community's history. Maybe there's a plaque on your school's property or in your town that commemorates a famous event. Tell us about it.
Are there poems or novels written about your area? Has your community been celebrated in song? Does it appear in history books?
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| Project Title: Sharing Australia's History | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This project tells about the rich history of Australia, including famous Australians, gold rushes, the city of Sydney and its famous opera house and harbor bridge, topographical features, animals, and the history of Newcastle, where our schools are located. (Don't miss the page devoted to famous Australians such as Steve Irwin, Heath Ledger, and Cathy Freeman.) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Project Title: Snapshots of Singapore, Asia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Students in Singapore, Asia, move out of the classroom and use technology, in a constructivist learning setting, to create new bodies of knowledge based on their own studies and observations. This project enables students to learn about the early immigrants to Singapore and how the current physical and social landscapes have evolved. Students visit places, interview people, do research, discuss in cooperative groups, reflect, write, and summarize what they have learned. They expand their understanding of their culture by combining what they have learned in the classroom with their own empirical experiences. Each group creates a webpage using SITES as a culminating activity. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Project Title: Historical Norton, Massachusetts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Third grade students explore their own community, do research, and create video reports. Students from two different elementary schools in Norton, Massachusetts, took an historical tour of their community, with cameras in hand. They studied the history of Massachusetts during the 1700's and summarized what they learned by creating videos which they narrated and posted in Google Maps. View the map of Norton and learn about its historical sites through the eyes of 3rd grade students. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Project Title: The Fultonville Historical Walking Tour | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This "walking tour" of Fultonville, an upstate New York village, nestled near the old Erie Canal, has been created byRyan Weitz, a high school student. Ryan is the youngest member of the APHNYS (Association of Public Historians of New York State). Ryan has a passion for New York State history and the history of his community, which was founded in 1824. He has been encouraged by Mr. Robert Headwell, one of Ryan's teachers, who is also the mayor of Fultonville, N.Y. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Fourth grade students in George Washington Elementary School study historic sites in their community. Each student chooses an historic site in Kingston, New York, to study. Students do research, visit the site personally, take digital photos, write descriptive paragraphs, and summarize what they have learned about their particular historic site. Using PhotoStory, students create photo "stories," complete with voice recorded narrations and export them to You Tube. The finished video stories are imported to Google Maps, as a final collaborative, class project on their home town - historic Kingston, New York. Their final culminating activity is a class picnic at one of the historic sites, to celebrate the completion of their project. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Grade 3 students, from Mulready Elementary School in Hudson, Massachusetts, combine social studies with technology skills as they learn about their own town. The students conducted research, personal interviews, and visits to some historical locations in their community. They learned how the past history of the town affected the current town. They studied the buildings and geography of Hudson. Students recorded what they learned through digital photographs, video, and written notes. Using the outlines and grahpic organizers provided by their teachers, they created a tour of Hudson, MA in Google Earth. As a culminating activitiy, the students and their teachers visited the historical locations they learned about. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Project Title: Kissimmee, Florida: From Fishing Village to Cow Town to Global Centerpiece of Disneyworld (still in progress) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Students in the Kissimmee Charter Academy in partnership with the Osceola County Historical Society, study the history of their community from native settlements to pioneer settlers to being a global focal point for Disneyworld. Learning objectives include critical thinking skills as students answer real world questions, use of primary source documents to legitimize historical facts, a variety of research techniques, and use of digital audio-visual equipment to record findings. Students collaborate and share their findings by using Google's online WEB 2.0 tools. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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History of Your Community
History Museums - Educational Programs
National Historical Parks & National Historical Sites
Educational Sites & Primary Materials