Artifacts of U.S. History for Teaching and Learning

Earlier this week I was catching up on some RSS feeds in Feedly when I came across this drawing from the patent application for the board game that became Monopoly. That drawing was the featured artifact of the day on the Today’s Document website published by the U.S. National Archives. It’s a resource that I frequently used when I taught U.S. History. Every morning Today’s Document features a new image or document from the archives. The documents are usually accompanied by some additional research links and lesson plan resources.

The Library of Congress offers a daily artifact feed similar to the one offered by the National Archives. Today in History from The Library of Congress offers a new image or document along with the story of the notable event or person connected to it. The LOC generally includes more information about the featured artifact than what the National Archives includes about their daily documents.

Applications for Education

When I was teaching U.S. History I used both of the resources on a regular basis. Sometimes I’d use, with modification, the lesson plans associated with the artifacts. Most of the time I just used the featured artifacts to spark little discussions about moments in history.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the importance of helping students recognize the differences between primary and secondary sources. If you missed that post, you can read it here.