HIST 813 Primary Sources 9 September 2005

I began this week by reading over the suggested items on website credibility and History on the web. In one of those I was reminded of just how easy it is to alter photographs or other historical documents to create one's own version of history. The Stalin/Trotsky example shows that this sort of thing is not new. I really need to spend some time going over the importance of website credibility with my students before beginning any project that involves online research.

From there I moved on to The Library of Congress and explored their teacher resources page. I really like how they give examples of how to use specific primary sources. Often, I will come across a primary source that I really want to show to my students, but I don't really have great ideas on how to present it and how they can manipulate the source to increase historical understanding. I will refer back to that section quite a bit.