Resource Blog #4: The Zinn Education Project
Resource Blog #4: The Zinn Education Project
is
a progressive website in which it provides outlooks on events
differently than a textbook would. Say, for example, you click on
“Andrew Jackson and “The Children of The Forest”’. The article talks
about promoting widespread ignorance onto the American people about the
Natives of the Cherokee, arguing that the best defense of the people is a
critical, informed public. In which a textbook completely falls short
of providing unbiased content such as this, the Zinn Education Project
displays many of
these types of stories. Below the article there was a teacher quote
prompt. This prompt provides a couple of compelling questions for
teachers to ask students. Thus, students are able to think more critically about past events such as this. 
Not
only does the website provides historical events, the Zinn Project also
hits on current issues which is great for Civics teachers. Topics such
as climate change, fossil fuel burning, and the oil pipeline mishap are
good examples of these. Underneath each article, there are small tips
(similar to mini-lessons)
provided. Each article’s “mini-lessons” can be different. For example,
“read further, teacher quotes, the effects, lesson plans, units, key
words, etc.. And before every article, a time period is given and the theme of the article is given. It would look like this if we were reading the oil pipeline article:
Time Periods: 21st Century, 2001 - Present
Themes: Climate Justice, Environment, Native American, Organizing, US Foreign Policy, World History/Global Studies
Conveniently,
on the right side of the screen for each topic, a resource bar is given
in which anyone can search for a certain topic, timeline, grade, and
theme. (276 words) (Updated 10/10)
I really like this resource Alex. It is cool to have a website that gives different perspectives to many topics and issues than textbooks. Textbooks can be troublesome because the information that is put into them is very biased and determined by people who could have reason to try and alter or soften history. It is good to get some things from textbooks, but resources like this are useful for all subjects and get students thinking critically about the information they are consuming.
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