The
Community Almanac offers people an online vehicle for expressing
and sharing what they love about their towns by making it possible
to gather multimedia stories on one accessible, easy-to-use
platform. Consider working with your students to create pages for
your community.
The Montana Historical Society has posted "A
Guide to Researching Your Historic Property" on its Montana
History Wiki.
Camp to Capitol:
Step into Helena's Past uses historical photographs to trace
Helena's development. Use the booklet to explore Helena - or as a
model for creating a similar project in your own community.
The PlaceNames Project/Building World Views Using Traditonal Cultures
and Google Earth is a bi-cultural curriculum exploring Indian'
(particularly Salish) and non-Indians' sense of place and introduces
students to the idea of "seasonal round," which frames a Salish and
Pend d'Oreille worldview.
"Exploring
Community through Local History: Oral Stories, Landmarks, and Traditions"
is a lesson plan from the Library of Congress.
Check here or with your local chamber of commerce to see if
preservationists have created a walking tour brochure for historic
districts in a town near you. If there is not a walking tour yet,
consider creating one as a class project.
The Heritage Education Network (T.H.E.N.) offers
excellent information and links on architecture and historic preservation.
The
Montana Heritage Project offers useful advice to teachers wishing
to engage in in-depth community study. See particularly the
project's ALERT model.
This list of resources and curricula for "Service
Learning and Historic Preservation" was compiled by the
Corporation for National and Community Service and Cultural Heritage
Services of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the
Interior.
The Promise of Place has also compiled curricular resources for
place-based learning.
The "Our
Town" lesson plan created by PBS to complement its show
1900 House guides students in an exploration of their communities circa
1900.
Page 69 of the teacher's guide to the "Architecture:
It's All Around You" footlocker offers an excellent bibliography,
while page 70 lists interesting links to websites with
architecture-related curriculum.
Montana The Magazine of Western History created a discussion
guide for "More
than the Glory: Preserving the Gold Rush and Its Outcome at Virginia
City," by Ellen Baumler, an article exploring the preservation of
Virginia City.
Curious how many Chinese lived in your county in 1910? Or how many men
in Montana couldn't read in 1900? Or how many farms in your county
were over 500 acres in 1890?
The University of Virginia Library's Historical Census Browser has
county level data for all of these questions and more.
"Helena As She
Was" offers a remarkable collection of images of Montana's state
capitol.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has begun a campaign,
called This Places Matters, to help people call attention to
special places in their community before they are endangered. To
participate, visit:
http://www.preservationnation.org/take-action/this-place-matters/
National Register nominations from your community are a great source
for local history research.
Find out what properties have been registered here. The Montana
Historical Society has begun to digitize nominations. Find full
text, searchable nominations online in the
“Montana on the National Register of Historic Places” collection
on the Montana
Memory Project.
