America on the Move

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/learning/classroom.html

Description: This activity guide accompanies the exhibition America on the Move. Through a variety of historical primary-source materials from the exhibition students build a deeper understanding of how transportation shaped American commerce, communities, landscapes, and population migrations. They apply the ideas for the exhibit to their own neighborhoods and communities. Standards 4.4.6, 8.6.2, 8.12.9, and 11.8.7

Author: Smithsonian Institution

Lesson ID: 48

Americans and the Automobile

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/oralhist/autoset.html

Description: Learn about the meaning of the automobile in American society through the voices of ordinary people drawn from primary sources from the American Memory Collection, American Life Histories, 1936-1940. Using excerpts from the collection, study the role of the auto through interviews that recount the lives of ordinary Americans. Based on these excerpts and further research in the collections, develop your own research questions. Then plan and conduct oral history interviews with members of your community. Standard 8.12.9 and 11.2.0

Author: American Memory Collection, Library of Congress

Lesson ID: 62

History of American Industry

http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/crossroads/sec5/Unit_07/Unit_07L3R1.html

Description: This activity allows you to become an active historian of an industry or business enterprise of your choice. If the community in which you live or a nearby city has such an enterprise that grew substantially in the latter part of the nineteenth century, you may wish to explore its development, using data available locally. Standard 8.12.1, 8.12.3, 8.12.4, 11.5.7, and 11.7.6

Author: Council for Citizenship Education, Crossroads Curriculum

Lesson ID: 504

Invention Factory: Thomas Edison's Laboratories

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/25edison/25edison.htm

Description: This complex of buildings in East Orange New Jersey--the chemistry, physics, and metallurgy laboratories; machine shop; pattern shop; research library; and Edison's rooms for experiments were built in 1887. They formed the core of Edison's research and development complex, which he claimed 1914 contained everything necessary to invent "useful things every man, woman, and child in the world wants...at a price they could afford to pay" Simulate what it might have been like to work here by creating your own invention. Standard 8.12.9

Author: Benjamin Bolger, Edison National Historic Site

Lesson ID: 579

Inventors and Inventions

http://www.teachtheteachers.org/projects/CCasement3/index.htm

Description: With all of the important technology that we use in our daily lives, it is easy to forget how each invention has changed life. The large inventions--the car, the jet, the computer-- depended on the small inventions--the book, the light, the radio. What was life like before these marvels that we take for granted? Which invention and inventor has done the most to change human existence? Which invention has done the most to make our lives more livable? Standard 8.12.9

Author: Caitlin Casement, Virgil Middle School

Lesson ID: 580