Movement and Migration: the Gold Nugget that launched the Gold Rush
Welcome to the Teaching Materials and Resources for the Gold Nugget Object Lesson. In this portion of the site, you will find a lesson plan and annotated links to other online resources.
In thinking about teaching with the Gold Nugget Object Lesson, it is useful to note some organizational characteristics of the main portion of the Web site. First, the Object Lesson is divided into four areas:
- Introduction: a brief contextual movie that deals with the discovery of gold in California, migration to that region, and life in the mining towns, and a QuickTime Virtual Reality representation of the gold nugget.
- Explore: a collection of primary sources and curator interviews designed to focus on the desk as an object, in historical context, and within the museum. This portion of the site allows students to browse content and explore their own interests.
- Tours: primary sources and curator interviews from the Explore section organized into two thematic tours. The Brief tour deals with the discovery of gold. The Extended tour deals with the discovery of gold and the lives of the peoples who resided in California during the gold rush.
- Resources: annotated links to other online resources that are related to western history and the California gold rush.
All of these materials are available to prepare students to partake of the interactive portions of the site. A close examination of the primary sources and curators interviews should enable students to submit thoughtful questions for the Forums with curators and historians. Similarly, students should be able to organize their knowledge of the material into a virtual exhibit that they can describe and annotate in the Activity section.
