History of Voting in the United States: Create a Virtual Exhibit
Welcome the Teaching Materials and Resources for the Voting Machine 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 Voting Machine 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 voting in U.S. History and a QuickTime Virtual Reality representation of the 1898 Standard Voting Machine.
- Explore: a collection of primary sources and curator interviews designed to focus on the voting machine as an object, the voting machine in historical context, and the voting machine 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 voter reform and machine politics. The Extended tour deals with the expansion and contraction of franchise between the Reconstruction Amendments and the granting of Women's Suffrage.
- Resources: annotated links to other online resources that are related to voting and the themes highlighted on the site.
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.
