Verify Untold Stories with OER Historical Digital Sites

An effective way to motivate and engage students is to create assignments that have a sense of purpose and relevance. In this assignment students are introduced to primary sources and are asked to analyze family documents, letters, oral history, photographs, or artifacts. Students come to appreciate and value the sources that render their family members as real people with stories and history. Examining family primary sources asks students to look deeper than surface features of ethnicity and to locate and evaluate their own heritage. Exploring these sources also promotes identity and self-awareness. Becoming aware of one's own racial, cultural, and ethnic background allows students to learn how their background has influenced one’s life experiences and outlooks. Past family events influence present family attitudes and cultural life experiences. Self-knowledge allows students to become cognizant of their own biases, values, and perspectives. They will develop empathy and tolerance for other cultures. Students may uncover societal oppression influenced by ethnicity. Students use the online primary source analysis worksheets created by the National Archives as a guide in the investigation of their sources. This is a tool that helps students to examine and interpret their genre of material and answer questions about author, date, purpose and context of the material. History becomes meaningful for students only when they personally engage in determining what the evidence of their findings reveals. As a librarian, I created a guide with freely available digital historical records, called Queens History as World History, that represent all the ethnic groups living in Queens, New York. These open sources are used to inspire inquiry based learning and teach historical methods and thinking. Students use the open sources to find the evidence of their family stories and struggles. Students submit their stories to open repositories and local community archive projects