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The stories of September 11, 2001 are very recent in the minds of most Americans, and they are still being formed in political and cultural debate, but other attacks and catastrophes from times past might give us clues to how history is created through storytelling. How do we understand a previous event or why is an event no longer recalled? Might the event have impacted your community in some way, or the families of other students? How did things change or not as a result of the event? If we were writing history, how would we decide whether to include the event? If not, why not? In our groups we will consider and investigate how the stories of these other events were “constructed” and how those stories have changed - in the telling and importance - over time. Do different groups within the United States remember those events differently, and how do those differences affect the way we think and what we do? As individuals and as a community or a nation?
What kinds of questions can we ask about these events? How will we research how such events might have touched their own families and community? How will we tell the stories we learn to all the other students, from different places, in our groups?
How do we decide if information is "good"? What is the source? Can we confirm it?
We will start to explore the past as historians do. We will begin by looking for stories and images from the time of the event, and then we will look for stories told afterwards. You and your groups will begin to decide whether what you find is reliable and confirmable (verifiable) information, not just an opinion. You will try to find out about the authors of the stories. Why did they tell or write these stories?
We will think about all of ways that events are recalled, and we can do this by accessing global news sources. Newspapers carry many kinds of stories around big events, including retrospectives. Comparing what seemed important on the day an event was first reported with coverage years later will help us build a sense of how history gets written.
You will work on this with students from your school, and with students from other schools in other places around the United States. You will be able to meet with those other students using "social networking" tools. You may Skype with them, or meet using other video tools. You will share "rooms" on TodaysMeet. You will work together using Google Documents you can all write in. You will share what you discover, and explain what you discover.Your group will then decide how you want to present what you have found and what you think to all the other students involved. You can make one Google Document, or build a Google Site like this, Or you might make videos, or slide presentations, or create a VoiceThread. What you make will be up to you and your teachers.But what you make should include your research, and should let us know how you found information, and how you decided what information should be included.
The "new" World Trade Center is now under construction in New York.
The 9/11 National Memorial is expected to be completed next year.
below: testing the waterfalls
One World Trade Center under construction (a live camera is here)
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