Primary Sources/NARA

The ability to access historical documents through NARA and NAIL was a wonderful resource to learn about. Finding a primary source is so powerful when researching any historical time period or event. Reading or hearing the words of a person that actually lived and experienced an event makes history so much more real than just reading a textbook. This was made very apparent in the address of the keynote speaker at TCEA in February, Erin Gruwell (pictured). She is the teacher that the Hillary Swank movie Freedom Writers was based upon. She was a dynamic and inspirational speaker. She told about her students reading the Diary of Anne Frank and becoming so involved in the story that they wanted to talk to someone who had lived through the events in the story. They did research and found that one of the people (a primary source) who had actually lived in the house with the Frank family was still alive. Through e-mail and letters they were able to bring this aged woman to their school to speak to them about her experiences. According to Ms. Gruwell they were blown away by her story. The power of a primary source was made very real to me through her retelling of this event.
Since reading of NARA and NAIL I have shared these sites with several teachers. I am encouraging them to use these databases when teaching students. I can see ways that teachers could use these resources to help students not only do historical research for social studies, but also to understand scientific and mathematical theory and do character studies in reading. The NARA worksheets can be a very viable resource for teachers to use to help guide their students. This is another way that teachers can use technology to do things that would not be possible without it. It is also a prime example of how the teacher has to be present to guide the students questions and searches to make the learning authentic.
I've included the link to these sources on my new school blog and hopefully the teachers and students who read it will be as excited as I am to use this information.