Historical events and notable people crop up all the time. Sometimes, however, we don’t realize the significance in real time. Teaching with Primary Sources at MSU Denver aims to change that with these ad hoc When History Happens events, where we focus on history in the making and take that excitement and training online to reach as many educators and students as possible.
|| Access When History Happens ||
In 2008 the Democratic National Convention came to Denver and created a tornado of historical moments. This confluence of events enabled us to study the present, learn from a comparable past and chronicle a major occasion for the future.
|| Access the WHH Conventions Case Study ||
Presidential Inauguration
Three teachers from the TPS-MSU Denver network and 60 of students will travel to Washington, D.C., for the January 20 inauguration of Barack Obama. The group will capture primary sources as they occur, write blogs, take photos and send back first-hand accounts of this historic event.
|| Access the WHH Inauguration Case Study ||
Thinkin’ Like Lincoln*
The TPS-MSU Denver team worked in collaboration with Governor Bill Ritter’s Colorado Abraham Lincoln bicentennial Commission to create programs throughout 2009 to commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Such programs:
- Promote awareness of how the West shaped Lincoln and how he shaped the West
- Encourage dialogue about and civic engagement with the challenges of democracy and equal opportunity
* This funny title comes from a Wizard of Oz movie duet between Dorothy and the Scarecrow. In the song, “If I only had a brain,” Dorothy sings:
With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’
You could be another Lincoln
If you only had a brain
