The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults
What it is: Digital Vaults reminds me of Museum Box that I wrote about a few weeks ago. The National Archives has put together an amazing site where students can create digital content with primary resources. Students can search photographs, documents, and other records and collect them. Students can use collected items to create their own digital poster or to make a movie. Students can also create a Pathway Challenge. In a challenge, students create a series of clues that show relationships between photographs, documents and other records. Others can take part in these Pathways Challenges. There are also ready made challenges that students can take part in, I just took the Lincoln challenge. Clues are given and students have to find a record that matches the clue. Very cool!
How to integrate Digital Vaults into the classroom: This is a truly incredible way for students to interact with history. While the site may be too hard for primary elementary students to use on their own, the Lincoln Pathway Challenge could be used with an interactive whiteboard with the teacher guiding the challenge. Teachers could also create a unique challenge that directly matches your curriculum for students to complete. The poster, movie, and create your own Pathway Challenge are an engaging way for students to learn about history in a hands on approach. Give students a direction to go and then give them time to collect resources, and create their digital history vault. This is not history as I remember it…in fact, I’m sure I would know much, much more about history if I were involved in my learning this way! This is so much better than learning history from an outdated text book, the Pathway Challenges are like virtual field trips through history.
Tips: I learned about this awesome website from Free Technology for Teachers, a great blog!
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Digital Vaults in your classroom.