How they are participating

Giving Tuesday Campaign to raise money for our educational program, Using Technology to Help Students Think Historically.

The purpose of this new educational program is to demonstrate that elementary and secondary school students are capable of thinking historically and to provide teachers and students with a free resource that enables them to practice the skill set necessary to do so.

Good historical thinkers are careful, critical readers who are hungry for evidentiary source data. Good historical thinkers are also tolerant of differing perspectives, because they appreciate that they can only understand the past by exploring the different opinions that emerged during crucial historical periods. At the same time, historical thinkers are skilled at detecting veiled partisanship and weak claims. They also know how to construct and defend evidence-based arguments because they must use the evidence revealed by historical documents to recreate and interpret moments of our past.

In short, good historical thinkers are informed, educated, and thoughtful. In a day and age when we use the internet as a shortcut for informed research and when we expect to receive information in 140 characters or less, teachers should encourage students to instead use the internet to develop the necessary skills for active citizenship.

ConSource staff members work directly with educators to help them integrate primary source documents into existing lesson plans and/or develop lesson plans with a heavy emphasis on primary source materials.