Harlem On My Mind: Documents

from 12/28/05 from pseudo-intellectualism

It's taken me a while- a lot of learning through lesson's learned in REAL settings- but I've figured out a pretty organized way of supporting project based learning with digital resources. I'll create a distinct folder with resources for viewing (film, archived websites, music, recorded speech or oral history, and primary documents). The folder can be transferred through the school's server (if possible) or to individual computer via firewire or my latest technique, via DVD's. The DVD technique preserves the original documents by forcing the kids to rename files. It also doesn't require the clean up mess and hard drive space maintenance problems. The only drawback is the time in reproducing the DVD's and the cost. I recently bought a DVD duplicator that helps with the time and DVDs can be bought for as little as $.25 now. Back to technique: Inside of that original transferred folder, in a subfolder, will also be microsoft word, powerpoint and quicktime and imovie templates for use as teacher assigments for assessments and start off points for independent research and project building. I might also provide photoshop documents, with printable "slices" for classroom or library poster construction (the halls can be used as well). This provides a visual for the students to use as a baseline for understanding. Projects can also be suggested from such posters. On this post I'll supply some documents in pdf formats. Here's a first hand account of Harlem History from famed San Francisco editor, Thomas Fleming. Here is one history tour of Harlem done by the great folks at forgotten-ny. Here's a second forgotten-ny tour.