Let’s be honest, I graduated high school less than ten years ago. I can easily recall a lot of my experiences and looking back, history was one of my favorite classes. I remember analyzing many primary sources as we prepared for state and AP tests. This week, I looked at an app that focuses on teaching students about history through primary sources. The app is called Engaging Congress and was created by Indiana University. Their goal was to create an interactive and fun platform, where students learn about the tenants of the government and the challenges of today’s world. You can read about it here: https://engagingcongress.org/
To start, I was really surprised by this app. Mostly because I realized how much I have forgotten about history. I played this free app on an iPad, but it’s also available to play on a computer. The main screen has many choices for users. You can choose a story to explore, view the primary source gallery, practice trivia, or take a trivia challenge. The text is bold, and the app utilizes contrasting colors so everything is very easy to use and access from this main menu.
I decided to explore the primary sources related to voting. Before exploring any primary source, there is a short video about what the sources are about and why the app is focusing on that time in history. These videos are animated and have cute, colorful characters. This is a great way to give a historical overview while also igniting interest and prior knowledge.
Then a user chooses a topic to explore. For voting, users can learn about Women’s Suffrage, Lyndon B. Johnson, the history of black voters and the 15th Amendment. Each option has a primary source. Essentially, when exploring a primary source that’s a photo, picture, or cartoon, the picture becomes a sort of puzzle with missing pieces. The user must match the missing piece into the place it actually goes. When putting the piece into place, you are asked a multiple choice question about the piece. This could be asking what the section of the photo reveals, what event in history it’s referring to, or what the piece’s specific symbolic meaning is. On the photo of women placing their votes into a ballet box, the app asks what their facial expressions reveal. From zooming in on their expressions, a student can select that they feel proud to be voting. Students even have to consider what time period the photo is from, based on the women’s style of dress. These activities make it easy to learn how to “read” a primary source and analyze even the smallest parts.
A user can also analyze written and published documents in this app. This functions the same way, except the missing puzzle pieces are sentences from the text. Students can zoom in on the documents to read what the paragraphs say and add in the missing sentences. When placing the correct sentence, you’re asked another multiple choice question. But these questions focus more on main ideas and who the individual paragraphs are focusing on. Once again, this builds skills so when students read a document, they can ask themselves: what is the main idea? What group of people is being discussed? This will allow students to successfully write about these documents and answer short answer questions about them.
After completing the primary sources and questions, I put together a timeline of the primary sources. While playing around on this app, it’s always easy to return to the home screen. There were no glitches from the app and I didn’t experience any advertisements. From the front screen, I also looked through the primary source gallery. There are colored graphs about the electoral college, maps relating to legislation about same-sex marriage, and actual historical documents. This app could then fit into different historical units, work to support an English class that needs to focus on historical context for a text, or a government and economics class. Plus the issues always relate back to the issues Americans face today.
This app would work best in middle school and high schools, where students are really delving deep into primary sources. This app can be great to help students analyze primary sources that are pictures. It will help students break down what they see and apply it to historical context. It will also help students focus on the main idea of historical documents that are written. It’s great that students can actually interact with the documents. They can zoom in and focus on the small details. It also shows some of the photographs in color, instead of the black and white print they might see in their school packets. The multiple choice question trivia might be helpful for students that need to review for a test or a state test.
However, this app does use a lot of multiple choice to have students identify the main idea of sources. This really seems to build the skills of students. It’s up to the teachers, maybe working with school librarians, to teach students about how to write about these sources and how to put those main ideas into their own words. They’ll need to teach students how to back up claims or opinions with the evidence from primary sources. This app is a great starting point and can supplement a lesson, but teachers have to take it further.
This brings up some important choices that a librarian might have to make. If a teacher comes into the library asking to plan a lesson around the app, how can a librarian take it beyond just multiple choice? What will they do with their students to help them make meaning? Maybe they’ll have students take notes on the document and write their opinions before answering the questions. Maybe they’ll have students create a KWL chart while looking at the documents. Forming a good relationship with the teachers they work with through trust is the first step to having these conversations.
Gabrielle Weiss Blog 