World History and Geography

World History and Geography: 1500 to Present

WHII.4 The student will demonstrate knowledge of the impact of the European Age of Discovery and expansion into the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

SOURCE Gorski, Paul. 1995-2002. http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/

This website was created by a professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Its mission is to create awareness of multiculturalism and teach it to anyone who will listen. The site is great because it offers a wide variety of resources, such as pictures, songs, and books to search.

I chose this site because it offers a host of options that could be used in terms of multiple intelligences. There are pictures, songs, poetry, fact sheets, film reviews and various other forms of information to access. In order to teach students about the Global age from 1500 to 1650, it would be helpful for them to view or hear about sources that they cannot read about in the textbooks. Use the songs to discuss the influence of religion during colonial period, or various forms of art that depict the trade of the era, or the leading men of the era. Students could use the songs or poems to compare the messages (of the songs or poems) to their own lives and reflect upon whether or not they can empathize.

SOURCE Gustavus Vasa. 1793. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olandah Equiano or Gustavus Vasa, Written by Himself (London: Printed and sold by the author. Pp. 46-53. http://www.nv.cc.va.us/home/nvsageh/Hist121/Part1/MidPassage.htm

This site contains a excerpt from Gustavus Vasa’s narrative of his life. This particular excerpt discusses his journey through the middle passage and the living conditions.

I chose this site because it contains a first hand account of the perspective of a slave as he is taken from Africa and transported to a country foreign to him. He talks about the treatment of Africans in general, as well as things unique to his own experience. This is useful because it provides a poignant portrayal of an aspect of the trade slave that comes from a native African, rather than from the perspective of a wealthy, white plantation owner.

This excerpt could be used when discussing the impact of mercantilism and colonialism and the growth of the slave trade. Usually students are provided only with the Anglo-Saxon perspective. This piece, however, will expose them to an African perspective of the slave trade.

WHII.5 The student will demonstrate knowledge of the status and impact of global trade on regional civilizations of the world after 1500 AD.

SOURCE Boals, Daniel. 1999-2002. http://my.execpc.com/~dboals/boals.html

This website was created by a high school history teacher who wanted to help teachers use the Internet as a tool for teaching and learning. The recipient of an “Academic Excellence Award,” the topics explore many aspects of social studies, containing primary documents, historical information, pictures, and other accessible websites.

I chose this webpage because of its extensive listings (which do include a section on diversity). The listings range from Genealogy to Archaeology to Religion and Ethics. Many of these links can be supplemental to the basic ideas that are discussed in the SOL’s. For example, in class, this website could be used to help students explore the genealogy of the aforementioned empires so that students can graph and organize trends in imperialism around the world.

SOURCE UK Department for Education and Skills. http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/word/secondaryschemes/his13.doc
Related: http://rubens.anu.edu.au/
http://www.indiatime.com/history/history.htm
http://edweb.gsn.org/india/mughals.html

This website is oriented more for teacher use rather than student use. It lays out ideas for units and includes information about prior knowledge that students should have. It also has information organized into compartments, which makes it easy for the teacher to obtain a lot of crucial information about India, the Mughal Empire, and coastal trade quickly. It also provides further resources/websites for the teacher to use, which will help both broaden and deepen the teacher’s knowledge.

I chose this website because it is practically impossible to know everything about all aspects of history. This is particularly true of world history because it is likely that even if one was a history major one would not cover all regions of the world in his or her studies. This website provides a quick reference for a multitude of information regarding India and it provides starting points for lesson ideas. The combination of these two things will prove to be useful for teachers, especially if they have little or no background in the history of India.

This website can assist in integrating a multicultural perspective by giving the teacher information and lesson ideas to use and incorporate into the classroom. The website addresses not only a history of India directly, but also the interaction between India and Britain, including both the British and Indian perspective. This website would be useful for teaching a unit on India, or teaching a unit on colonialism – for example teaching about the different perspectives of the country being colonized and the country colonizing. I would also use this website in conjunction with other sources that provide pictures of Indian artwork and architecture since the Mughal period was particularly proficient in producing exquisite artifacts.

WHII.8:The student will demonstrate knowledge of the effects of the Industrial Revolution during the nineteenth century.

SOURCE Reese, Lyn. 2001.http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/textile.html

This website focuses exclusively on the lives of female textile workers during the industrial revolution in England during the 1840s. It dispels the assumption that women’s going to work in factories was a liberating experience for them. To do this, it shows the types of songs women sang about the mills, their roles in the factories, their testimonies, and pictures and illustrations. The website also includes questions about all the information provided. However, I do not think all of the questions should be used in a lesson. This lesson focuses on historical perspective and questions the view that the industrial revolution was beneficial for everyone.

I choose this source for its easy-to-follow format that would allow students to see in many forms that women were not “freed” by the industrial revolution and the revolution itself was not beneficial to everyone. The pictures, lyrics, testimonies, and statistic’s would all be useful in a lesson on the Industrial Revolution if the 1840s in England and could easily be discusses in comparison with what would happen in America.

This resource goes far beyond the “famous person” approach that Banks discuses because it addresses perspectives of the average female during the Industrial Revolution. I would infuse this into curriculum on the Industrial Revolution in two ways. I would either 1) create a web quest for this site and design questions to guide students as they discover the position and perspective of these women, or 2) print off the picture and the song lyrics and lead a discussion with students as to why the lyrics say what they do and how someone who wrote those lyrics would be feeling at the time. This site is wonderful insofar as is truly allows the teacher an opportunity to explain to students how we did not live then so we cannot understand everything that went on, but through the testimonies and lyrics of these women we can see their perspective.

WHII.11:The student will demonstrate knowledge of the worldwide impact of World War II.

SOURCE The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.1999. Mentally and Physically Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/

This is a brochure form the Holocaust Museum that is available on-line. It gives a description as to how handicapped individuals experienced much of the holocaust similar to Jews, Poles, and homosexual individuals. It includes data on the laws imposed on people who were handicapped as well as information on how those laws were enforced. The brochure contains several photographs documenting these experiences of handicapped individuals.

I choose the Holocaust Museum site for its detailed account of the Holocaust. I specifically choose the brochure on Handicapped individuals to focus on other discrimination practices of Nazi Germany. Most children know that millions of Jewish people died in the Holocaust, but they don’t know about how other types of people were treated during this era in history. This brochure allows the teacher to move beyond the famous “Anne Frank” version of Holocaust history into varied perspectives. There are several other brochures on Poles, homosexuals, and Jehovah Witnesses that would allow teachers to show other angles of the Holocaust.

This on-line brochure could be material for students to read (it is available in PDF) and gain a more complete understanding of the Nazi goal to “purify” the Aryan race and cleanse the world of its “inferior peoples.” More importantly, students will gain and understanding of discrimination and inhumane behavior based on the facts presented in this document. Teaching this subject is very sensitive and needs to be dealt with care. Also, teachers could simply use visuals of this brochure to illustrate points throughout a lecture.

WHII.13: The student will demonstrate knowledge of political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of independence movements and development efforts.

SOURCE Pojer, Susan M. 1998-2002. http://www.historyteacher.net
Related: http://www.historyteacher.net/GlobalStudies/MidEast_Culture.htm
http://www.historyteacher.net/GlobalStudies/MidEast_Colonialism.htm

This website provides a wealth of information related to the Middle East and the partitioning of states in the Middle East. It provides primary sources including the Hussein-McMahon letters, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the Balfour Declaration, as well as other lesser known primary documents. Additionally, the website provides several different historical maps of the Middle East, so students can see how the borders of Arab countries changed over time. It also contains several timelines of various aspects of Middle Eastern history, links to related websites and photographs of the Middle East.

I chose this website because I felt it was fairly comprehensive, and it contains information far beyond what I would ever expect to be able to cover in a world history class. However, this website makes it possible for students to learn a lot of information in a short period of time, and it allows them to explore areas of Middle Eastern history that may be of particular interest to them.

This resource can enhance multicultural learning in the social studies classroom by providing both the teacher and the students with a broad foundation for obtaining information. Students will have the opportunity to examine various aspects of life in the Middle East while studying about colonialism so they can begin to see how colonialism affected the lives of Arabs. Examining the traits of different cultures also gives students the opportunity to compare and contrast those traits with their own culture.

WHII.14:The student will demonstrate knowledge of the influence of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism in the contemporary world.

SOURCE IslamiCity. 1995-2003. www.islamicity.org.

This website contains information about various aspects of Islam including a description of beliefs and the pillars of Islam, examples of sacred writings, and a mosque locator. There are also pictures of people performing religious customs and behaviors in their native lands and excerpts of the Quran are included in Quranic Arabic. There is also an atlas of Islam which points out where Islam is practiced and by how many people. The site also provides information about Islam in a historical context and how it originated and developed, as well as information about the role of women in Islam.

I chose this website because it is fairly comprehensive, yet basic enough to introduce students who are unfamiliar with Islam to Islam. I also chose this source because there are many areas for students to visit – they can find information about Islam itself, Islam in a historical context, Islam and gender issues, the locations, origin, and spread of Islam. Students can also look at pictures, watch video clips, and see how Arabic is written. This provides students with a more complete, concrete picture of how Islam is portrayed in daily life. Students are provided with both visual and aural, linguistic and non-linguistic representations of Islam.

This resource can enrich and infuse a multicultural perspective into social studies teaching in several ways. First of all, it introduces students to the religion of Islam. Islam is increasingly important in today’s world given current international events between the United States, the Middle East, and parts of South Asia. Furthermore, many Americans are ignorant about Islam. This website will provide students with an introduction to the Islamic religion and they will gain some exposure to how Islam plays out on a daily basis and why it is relevant in today’s world.

On the other hand, an increasingly large portion of the population of the United States is made up of people who practice the Muslim faith, which means that several children in your classroom will likely be Muslim. This website can provide a starting point for students to teach and learn from each other.

Teachers can use this website either for a single lesson or an entire unit on Islam. Students can form groups and examine different aspects of Islam and Muslim life and give presentations to the class about them. Another option is to have students use this website in addition to other materials related to other religions like Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism and have them compare and contrast the religions, plot out on a map where these religions are practiced and by what percentage of the population, and to analyze the contributions of each religion to the modern world.

SOURCE Pojer, Susan M. 1998-2002. http://www.historyteacher.net

This website is a comprehensive history site created and kept by Susan Pojer, a social studies teacher at Horace Greely High School in Chappaqua, NY. There are literally lists of links addressing every branch of social studies, each accredited. The site has won numerous awards for its breadth and depth. It covers not only social studies websites on any topic, but also current news and world issues essential to making connections for students.

This site was chosen because of the range of choices listed on it, and the reliability of those choices. I have used this site numerous times for my own lesson planning.

This site can be used to teach any number of topics, or any class level. The links range from sites for 9^th grade teachers to sites for 12^th grade AP teachers. I would use this if doing a project in which students compare and contrast different cultures or religions in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of those cultures. For example, working to understand the differences in the religions listed above in the SOL has a lot of potential because not only could students use the information from this site to research the religions and belief systems, they could use it to trace the differences and compare the differences (or similarities) that still exist today in order to understand international human relations today.

WHII.15:The student will demonstrate knowledge of cultural, economic, and social conditions in developed and developing nations of the contemporary world.

SOURCE Herst Communications. 2003. http://www.sfgate.com/gallery/photoessays/kosovo/

This San Francisco Gate web site does not provide much information about ethnic conflict; however it has pictures form the associated press of the conflict in Kosovo in 1999. The pictures show women, children, and men all suffering from the hardships of oppression. Most of the pictures are ethnic Albanians in refugee camps.

I choose this site because these pictures are telling of the pain the individuals are feeling in the situation they are in. Furthermore, I think that this picture could easily be related to student’s lives by asking those questions about places they have seen ethnic conflict in milder forms. As Banks notes, the world is becoming increasingly smaller in terms of communication and contact and our students need to be prepared to live in a multicultural world. These pictures clearly demonstrate the repercussions of refusing to openly live in their world. These dramatic photographs suit the visual learner well and clearly communicate a message of cultural tolerance and cultural awareness.

These photographs could be used as a Do-Now to introduce a lesson ethnic conflict, followed by a classroom discussion. They could also be used for a group activity where students each receive a photo, talk about what they see, re-group for a class discussion on how they have seen ethnic conflict portrayed in the news and in their own lives as well as how it could be prevented in the future. In this way, students begin to see how their lives play out in a multicultural world.