The National Archives Experience Digital Vaults is one of the resources that I almost always share in my workshop on teaching history with technology primary sources. The Digital Vaults offers good tools that students and teachers can use to create content using images and documents from the National Archives. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how students can create digital posters and movies in the National Archives Experience Digital Vaults.

Applications for Education
Creating a short video featuring artifacts from the National Archives could be a great way for students to summarize a topic or theme in US History. When I’ve used it with students in the past I have asked them to demonstrate an understanding of the connections between the artifacts that they chose to use in their videos.

Please note that the Digital Vaults website loads a lot of media when you visit it for the first time. Give it ten seconds or more to load everything before you start to create and investigate. It also helps to be using an updated browser (Chrome or Firefox are best).