Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Old Film Clips on History Reference Center

Wow, four day weekend in New Orleans--tired, well-fed and superbly entertained! There is no segue from that to this, so I won't even try: Last Thursday I had a class with the Mobile County Public School System High School Library Media Specialists. In preparation I tried to find those things that might grab the interest of high school kids and their teachers. We, librarians, and most academics think that library research is really fun. We find all kinds of things that inspire even more curiosity. But how do you spark the curiosity of current high school students? Video is a great draw.

The History Reference Center under our Articles, Indexes, Databases page [drag down on the page to the Hs] has an image/video search on the green header bar. Search for clothing or automobiles or almost anything you want using this search and you'll get some great video clips, many from the turn of the century. These are primary documents--actual footage from the time and a great way to get students of all ages thinking about the many facets of history. Using the videos with the George Mason University website "Making Sense of Evidence" and students might actually have a good time "doing" history instead of just reading about it. Try the video search in the History Reference Center database.

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