Focuses on the rationale for campaign finance reform, preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption in the electoral process, and the need for balancing the constitutional rights protected by the First Amendment. Discusses the issues of disclosure, contribution limits, issue advocacy, and soft money. Includes teaching activities and…

Explores the interconnection between academic historians and the schools. Discusses the efforts of the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association, the barriers between academics and working teachers, and two recommendations to achieve progress in this area (collaborative professional development and addressing educational issues of…

Provides background information on the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the photographic section of the FSA. Identifies six photographers and features three photographers (Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Ben Shahn) who were recruited to document farm conditions. Discusses using FSA photos in the classroom and provides lesson plans to help…

Describes a course for first-year college students that focuses on the Silk Road. Discusses the problems that occurs in such a course, types of resources used, basic strategies and tactics taken, and the focus on mapmaking in the beginning of the course. Includes an annotated bibliography. (CMK)

Considers reader response to be a useful teaching method when it is linked with course goals and integrated into the structure of the classroom. Recommends reader response because it promotes critical thinking and comprehension of reading materials, facilitates class participation, and engages students in the learning process. Gives a sample…

Maintains that by developing a history-based website, teachers can utilize the Internet in their classroom to inspire a love of history in their students. Describes the benefits a history website offers, while also providing the necessary guidelines and knowledge needed to create a website. (CMK)

Presents a hypermedia scrapbook assignment in which students identified seven key objects, feelings, or concepts that they felt were important to them in order to enhance their historical reflection. Conveys that the assignment focused on nonlinear ways of thinking and helped students develop a sensitivity towards evidence. (CMK)

Explores a team of college educators' experience with creating an electronic classroom. Addresses the different technology problems that were confronted and considers how history teachers can be convinced to use technology in their courses. Describes the undergraduate U.S. history survey course focusing on the uses of technology. Includes the…

Presents a three-day lesson in which students learn how to interpret photographs as texts, learn about the history of social welfare in the United States, and learn about the role of institutions in family life. Provides historical information on social welfare institutions and family life. Includes directions for teachers. (CMK)

Presents a lesson on the creation and work of the U.S. Children's Bureau, the first national agency specifically for children and youth. Includes a document in which Grace Abbott, one of the Bureau's chiefs, expresses problems faced by the Children's Bureau. Offers questions for class discussion. (CMK)

Describes the content of a course on material culture for undergraduate students that was separated into two sections: (1) first students read books and analyzed artifacts; and (2) then the class explored the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) in 1876, applying material culture methods and constructing a Web site from their…

Teachers most interested in a constructivist approach to historical instruction often use new technology to provide realistic, inquiry-based learning situations for their students. Recent research in social studies learning has de-emphasized student memorization of facts and text-based instruction in favor of engaging students in historical…

Asynchronous online discussion has been shown to enhance communication between students and to elicit many cognitive indicators. Nevertheless, historians have often been reluctant to make use of such instructional technology. Students enrolled in a fully online world civilization course corroborated qualitative research findings regarding the…

Few events in American history are so universally deplored as the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The United States government has acknowledged the error and the injustice that resulted with an official Presidential apology and a Congressional disbursement of reparations to the victims of the incarceration policy. The…

The author achieved something that he had been striving to do for several semesters when, in 2002, he revised his survey course on the history of the United States up to Reconstruction by replacing most of the photocopied readings he had assigned in the past with online texts. Readings on the web now provided the basis for 10 of the 12 weekly…