Collaborative Review

I will review tha assignments in order.

Roosevelt cartoon: I liked the use of the cartoon. When I was reading the historical background I wasn't sure if you were talking about Franklin Roosevelt or Teddy Roosevelt at first. I read down to the next paragraph to see that you were talking about Teddy. I did like the use of your cartoon and the shadowy figure. One thing I would suggest is that you try to compare it with a favorable Roosevelt cartoon to show that there were supporters of Roosevelt and a third term.

Nixon and Tapes: This classic cartoon demonstrates the situation that Nixon allowed himself to get into. The thing I liked most about this choice is the background information that you gave which included the fact that there were six other Presidents that had done the same thing but didn't get caught. I think to carry this assignment one step further would be to include what other Presidents had done and gotten caught when others got away with their sometimes illegal acts. You could throw in Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and Clinton and Monica Lewinski.

US/Britain and the Battle in the Atlantic: These cartoons were good choices for your background information. I noticed that you had students compare the two cartoons but no contrasting. I know that this is a big "testing" item and should be thrown in whenever possible. You could have had them do a venn diagram of the two cartoons and then answered the question of why were the Germans perceived as the winners at that time.

Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan: What a great comparison with the use of modern media to define how a president is received by the American public. In both the background knowledge and the cartoons you stuck to strictly explaining them, I think you should elaborate on your background knowledge a little bit, such as including how former President Kennedy used the media to win the first televised presidential debates.

Corruption in US elections: This was a good comparison and I liked how you spanned time with how corruption as effected US government for years. A couple of things I would like to add would be adding a contracting or more comparison of the cartoons. Even having them analyze how the facial expressions change over time to show corruption or how their body language is expressed in the different cartoons.

Overall, I like the cartoons that you picked and I will use some of your lesson plans. I personally do more compare/contrast just because that is a testable item and it is being pushed in our district.

Exploring Political Cartoons on the Web

Using political cartoons in the classroom is a very important way to explain the "mood" of a people. Including when or how they view political changes. THroughout history we see the political cartoons portraying the way "common people" are feeling about decisions being made in Washington.
Because political cartoons are so accessible today it is easy to include them into lesson plans. If you choose to incorporate these into your daily lessons you should do some research on the background of the cartoon. This should also include biographical information on the cartoonist, so you could gauge where they are on the political spectrum. You are able to find both the cartoon and a biography on such website as Library of Congress, National Archives, and History Matters to name a few. These are the best, in my opinion, about having all the information you need for lessons.

"Using Political Cartoons to Teach American History"

Hello all. I am Julie Dunham and I am taking this course with you. I teach World and American History at Independence High School in Independence, Ks and have held that position for the past six years.

THe way I use political cartoons currently is not as effective as what I would like it to be. I usually throw one in here and there to emphasize a point about who had political power, what the mood of the time period was or just to show humor in a sticky situation. What I am hoping to achieve through this course is to develop the political cartoons in a way that they are simply clues that the student needs to figure out. Not strictly what I am telling them.

Day 3 TAHPS

Day 3
Visual History
The use of visual history is very important to history classes. This gives students the ability to make an honest connection from the information you are giving them and give them a visual to know who we are talking about. The students can now do research quite easily when they have websites available to them and they don’t have to have everything copied and handed out to them.

Steamship Arabia
The Steamship Arabia was great. I had never been there but I knew the story. I am glad that the Hawley family decided that their find was more important as a museum than as selling the items on ebay. It was overwhelming as to the amount of cargo that was on such a small ship. I understand that it was going to be sold at stores when it arrived up river. It did create several questions for me that the museum guide was able to answer. Such as has any families ever come back to claim that their family lost the items? The answer was no. Another question was insurance claims, and whether or not they were compensated from any of the goods. It turns out that only three companies made claims and they were not successful in proving how much goods were on the boat.
The most ironic part is that the boat sunk in 15 feet of water. The crew and passangers were able to go to the top deck and wait to be shuttled across to shore. How funny would that have been to be on top of a boat that was sunk.

Day 2 TAHPS

Daguerreotype photographs were some of the first photos taken. There were traveling photographers who went from town to town peddling their trade. They were able to take their equipment and do location shots or set up a temporary studio and do indoor shots. The photographs would be rather expensive and so everyone couldn’t afford to have one done. Also, if you had a death then it was common place to summon the photographer to take photos of the dead. This was especially true with children. This was done because this was probably the only visual record of the life of the child. The problem with the daguerreotype photos was that there could be absolutely no movement because there was a twenty second development time, if you moved then you would blur the photo. Some of the photos taken were of families, pets, and slaves.

The Neilson-Atkins museum was neat. The only problem was that our “experts” were reading directly from the placard that was on the wall next to the photographs. We could have done that ourselves. It was great to be able to go and do a private showing of the daguerreotype photographs. It was hard to create a reproduction by taking a photograph of it because it was created on a mirror.

TAHPS-Document 1

The Kingdom of Matthias was a very interesting read. I would say that the events that were discussed in the book took place in the early 1800s but they could have happened in present day. The religious following that Matthias had was comparable to that of Jim Jones, the Mormons, or David Koresh. They were all charismatic leaders who motivated their followers to do whatever they asked. They were also willing to give up many material possessions to make sure their “savior” was well taken care of. The fact that there was a large amount of “chosen spiritual partners” shows that Matthias had a distortion of followers who allowed them to do things that they were not comfortable with. Elijah Pierson was a devout follower who paid dearly for his beliefs in Matthias. Before he met Matthias he was a religious man, in fact, on the day of his wife’s funeral he told those in attendance that he was going to raise her from the dead. He believed himself to have some of the same supernatural powers as Abraham had. When he was not successful, he then said that he would resurrect her when the Kingdom of Heaven comes to earth. A few years later was when he met Matthias who also had an interesting history with his wife. Matthias left his wife and kids when they were still young to pursue his own interests. He soon discovered that he attained followers who were devout Christians.
In reading this book I realized how manipulating religious influences could be.

What I learned

What I learned last summer?
What would you do if you found a document that stated that Fidel Castro had doubts on whether or not he could rule a country like Cuba? What would the world would be like if someone else would have become dictator? This was the questions that I posed to my high school American History classes. After studying the relations between the United States and Cuba I showed the class the document. Some of them were surprised because they had always assumed that Cuba was communist because that was what the citizens wanted but upon further investigation they decided that it was because of the leader not the people. The kids were split up into groups and they had to decide what the relationship between the two countries would be if Castro had decide that he was not qualified for running a country. They also had to decide how the Cold War would have changed as a result of Castro not running Cuba or even if Cuba had not fallen to communism. Many of the students felt that nothing would have changed. Their explanation was that if Castro didn’t take the job then someone else would have. Which I could see their point.
I had other students who decided that the world would have been very different, in fact I had a group that said that the Cold War would have ended sooner that what it did and we would have been able to control the Soviet Union and avoided the Space Race and many other conflicts if Castro had given up his position.
When we did this lesson it was about two weeks after it was announced that Fidel Castro’s brother was the new leader of Cuba because of Fidel’s health. I also had two students who were from Puerto Rico and they shed a new light on how hated Fidel Castro is in Cuba.

Life

Today we had to create a life timeline. It was interesting to see what I have done in my relatively short life. I do remember a lot of things in "history" that have happened. At times I could remember those things more than I could what was happening to me. I also realized that all of the things that have happened to me have made me me. I know that I would not be the person I am if I had not lived through these experiences. I never regret anything I do, but I learn from these events and grow because of them.