Building Learning Communities 2011

Launched one year ago, thousands of educators around the world have joined the DocsTeach community to locate primary sources and learning activities for their classrooms, borrow from fellow teachers’ work and create their own interactive online learning activities centered on historical thinking skills. This session will highlight the tools available on DocsTeach.org from the National Archives Experience with a focus on constructing assignments that let students build upon basic document-analysis skills to think critically and meaningfully engage with primary sources. For first-time or existing DocsTeach users, attendees will become familiar with the following aspects of DocsTeach.org:

• Locating Primary Sources
• Creating Online Activities
• Interpreting Data, Weighing the Evidence, Mapping History, Making Connections, Seeing the Big Picture, Finding a Sequence, Focusing on Details tools
• Scaffolding with Primary-Source Based Activities
• Designing DocsTeach Classrooms for multi-step lessons or units