Paul's students used the photos as launching pads to learn about the technologies used during the war, the complex roles of African Americans in the war, and how the North's industrial power ultimately helped it to win. History From Multiple Perspectives Online historical archives offer a more complex, fragmentary, and cacophonous view of history than traditional classroom materials. Textbooks in many ways perform a filtering function absent on the Web. Their narratives are written in a vocabulary and at a level of complexity deemed suitable for particular grades. Materials are screened for moral and ethical appropriateness.
Historical collections used by scholars, including many on the Web, are more unruly.
Students with contrary views, especially if they are black, might feel silenced and angry. But these texts also create rich learning opportunities, if they are treated as historical evidence, subject to intellectual and ethical scrutiny. They began to see that he chronicled many abuses that slaves routinely suffered. Finally, Jeanne assigned students a variety of accounts of slave life by rich white planters, poor whites, and former slaves who described both harsh treatment and efforts to resist and escape. Students compared competing accounts and tried to explain variations and discrepancies.