Website Spotlight: Civil War (Ken Burns)

 

Website URL: http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/

Introductory Note:

Welcome to one in a series of posts which spotlight quality websites that I use with my U.S. History survey course students at Azusa Pacific University to enrich the regular material in our learning modules.

In this post, I limit myself to those specific aspects of the website which I find fit particularly well within our face-to-face class sessions (each student is required to bring a laptop to class) or as the basis for the students' regularly-assigned written reactions.

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I ask the students to work through the following links:

a. Section entitled "Images of the Civil War"
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/images/

Good material in the part "Telling Details"

b. Section entitled "The War"
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/

b1. Subsection on "Maps" is great. Can enlarge each map.
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/map1.html

b2. Subsection on "Biographies."
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/biographies/barton.html

Nursing majors may want to check out Clara Barton.

b3. Subsection on "Historical Documents"
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/documents.html

Sullivan Ballou letter is a tearjerker.

c. Excellent discussion questions:
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/classroom/discussion.html

e. Detailed timeline:
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/classroom/timeline.html

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Concluding Note:

I hope you will use this blog post in conjunction with both the modules on my Learning Professor wiki and the numerous other posts in my Website Spotlight series.

1. The website spotlighted in this post fits within the following U.S. History survey course module on the wiki:
http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces.com/Civil+War

2. The other blog posts in my Website Spotlight series--chronologically displayed by U.S. History survey course module-- can be found on this wiki page:
http://thelearningprofessor.wikispaces.com/WEBSITE+SPOTLIGHT