Serendipitous!

I just love it when something pops into my life right when I need it. Seems I have Someone looking out for me who believes in Just-In-Time delivery.

I’m teaching my 8th Graders about primary sources next week in anticipation of doing a R.A.P. reading response on some Revolutionary War primary sources. There are some excellent sites on the web on this topic. (You can find my links under the tags “PrimarySource” and “AmericanRevolution” on my del.icio.us) Anyway, today I ran across two blog posts that were exactly what I needed this week.

First, over at Teaching Generation Z, Australian Graham Wegner discusses the plausibility of using the web as a primary source. His post made me think about whether some blogs and wikis, written by observers of an event in that present time, would qualify. That wasn’t really his point, but you’ll have to visit his blog to see where he goes with it.

Second, I’ve been wondering how it’s going to play out while I’m moving my students from scripted, prompted blogging (as they learn what good blogging is) to creative, self-motivated writing in their blogs. So I was grateful to find Mr. Fisher at Remote Access. Take a look at Blogging v. Writing. Good stuff.

Something else that occurred to me later was to try and find some primary sources from a non-American viewpoint. I’m thinking British, French, or Native American? We’ll see what I can find. Please let me know if you have any leads.