What it is: Primary Access is a tool I learned about today while attending one of the K12 Online conference sessions. This incredible site has a web-based tool that offers students and teachers simple access to digital images and materials that provides them the opportunity to create personal narratives. The idea behind the site is that if students are offered primary source documents, they develop better historical thinking skills. I highly recommend you watch the presentation on k12 Online, to see just how accurate this belief was in a case study of the site. Students use Primary Access to create digital movies (historical narratives) that help add to meaningful learning experiences. The site is very simple to use, intuitive enough that even a student (or teacher) who has never created a digital movie would be successful.
How to integrate Primary Access into the classroom: Use Primary Access as a tool to bring history to life for your students. Using the site, students can create a short digital movie that explores some event in history. The digital movie will only be 1-3 minutes in length and can contain images, text, movies, and narration recorded in the students own voice. Students have a place to write, research, narrate, view, and search a time line and idea map right in Primary Access. The finished product is educational and entertaining for the creator and viewers. The results with this site are truly amazing! It really does bring history to life.
Tips: It isn’t obvious how to create a teacher account on Primary Access, to create an account go to http://primaryaccess.org/teacher.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Primary Access in your classroom.
