William Sullivan

ETEC 698
Technology and Social Justice
Summer ‘08

WEB BASED RESOURCE PLAN

1. Introduction.

The resource I chose.

The Library of Congress: American Memory: War, Military: Pearl Harbor and Public
Actions ~ Audio Interviews ~ 1941-1942

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afcphhtml/afcphhome.html

A brief annotation of the resource.

“American Memory is an online archive of over 100 collections of rare and unique items
important to America’s heritage. The collections contain more than 7 million primary
source documents, photographs, films, and recordings that reflect the collective American
memory. They are a treasure trove of unique personal items from another period in time –
perhaps old records, letters with exquisite penmanship and arcane language, clothing,
keepsakes, or faded photographs. These collections are ‘snapshots’ providing a glimpse
into America’s past.” This statement is taken from the site.

Background information about my locus of control or implementation

area.
This Web-based project will be implemented with my fifth grade students for the 2008-
2009 school year in the last two weeks of November, all of December and most of
January. The subject area this unit is designed for is Social Studies. The topic will be
Pearl Harbor, and pre-World War II to the first year of the war.

Demographics regarding the population this resource might most

affect in my situation.
The participating students all share Hawaiian ancestry, mixed with Japanese, Chinese,
Portuguese, Caucasian, Pilipino, Pacific Islander, and/or other ethnic backgrounds. With
the common ethnic thread of Hawaiian, many also have Japanese ancestry. With these
two main ethnic groups making up the demographics of my class, the content of the
subject matter being studied is very appropriate, and wise to explore.

2. An essential problem and/or task that the resource will address.

Real-life problem(s) the resource can address in my own LOC.

Since the students receiving this instruction and opportunity to learn from student-based
instruction are from the Hawaiian Islands, it is only appropriate Pearl Harbor is studied.
Students may even have older relatives (kupuna) who were eyewitnesses to the bombing
of Pearl Harbor. Also, students are residents and citizens of a place where a major
historical event for the area, the country, Japan and the world took place. Students in
Hawaii need to know and understand this location and its history. With American
Memory is an archive for primary resources; students will get factual information, and
not assumptions and the interpretations of others. This will help build their knowledge
base to use and recall throughout this project, and hopefully with future opportunities as
they may revisit this time period and historical event.

Appropriate background information about the problem/task and why it

is important to address in my situation.
As many of the students have Japanese ancestry, parents and/or relatives, it is imperative
that what took place in their own backyard, leading up to and after the bombing and
declaration of war against Japan. They may have a relative who was an eyewitness, or
lost a family member in the crossfire. They need to understand the Japanese-American
perspective. With the gained knowledge from this unit, they may be able to understand
what their relative went through during the bombing, but more importantly grasp what
happened to them during the years of interment. Also, because there is Hawaiian history
of the area, the pre-settlement times at Pu’uloa (area where Pearl Harbor was built), it is
important that the students know the Hawaiian frame of reference before Pearl Harbor.
Everything learned within this unit will be used as background information to support the
students’ learning when they fly to O’ahu to visit Pearl Harbor just before the
culminating end of the unit.

3. An action plan detailing how I would go about integrating the

resource in my LOC.

Activities that might be associated with this plan.

The following two main sections of this unit that will be the backbone of the learning
experience, driving the development of student historical inquiry. They will contain sub-
activities that will help the students complete three separate culminating projects.

1. Read and discuss Graham Salisbury’s book Under The Blood Red Sun, a story of an
ethnically mixed group of ten and eleven year old boys, whose favorite pastime is playing
baseball and following the major leagues games over the radio. The story recounts the
few weeks prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the boys witnessing of the bombing
from their baseball diamond and the days that follow, and what happens with them and
their families. One boy, who is Japanese-American, endures hardships along with his
family, especially his father and grandfather, because of the attack.

2. Discussion throughout this project will help students develop critical thinking with
guiding questions based on Bloom’s Taxonomy. “Essential questions” will assist students
to direct and develop their own search. These questions would will be used. “In Under
The Blood Red Sun, what were the viewpoints of the attack of the four boys, who were
best friends before the bombing of Pearl Harbor?” and “Give examples of what it was
like being a child when the Japanese bombs fell and were caught in the war at home.” or
“Explain why there were interment camps through the viewpoint of the Japanese-
American perspective.” These and others will be used to develop inquiry skills needed to
locate and absorb information from the primary sources. Students will be taught to
“observe, think and ask” as they practice search procedures by conducting sample
searches provided in a sequential fashion before their actual search.

Students will locate and utilize primary sources online through The Library of Congress,
United Streaming, and through investigating non-fictional books. With the information
they will document facts, and their impressions that they will use in a culminating project
that will reflect what they learned from their research.

Among the sub-activities are the following:

1. Research and study what led Japan to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, how they
accomplished such a feat, and how life in Hawaii reflected of the times, especially on
O’ahu. Students will also examine the attitudes of the American people, in general, at the
time.

2. Examine and use a timeline of the events with Japan and the U.S. leading up to the
bombing.

3. Read text and analyze photographs from a book on Pearl Harbor called: From
Fishponds to Warships: Pearl Harbor--A Complete Illustrated History by Allan Seiden.
This book looks at the famous site from its pre-settlement day, when it was an
uninhabited tropical lagoon, to the famous attack ion December 7, 1941.

4. Use a variety of resource books with pertinent information such as:

a) Pearl Harbor Child : A Child's View of Pearl Harbor from Attack to Peace by
Dorinda Makanaonalani, Stagner Nicholson, and Larry Nicholson. The book is about
Dorinda, a 6 year old, living with her parents on the Pearl City Peninsula, on December 7,
1941, with the entire American naval fleet peacefully anchored within a few hundred
yards of her home.

b) Pearl Harbor: The Day of Infamy - an Illustrated History by Dan Van Der Vat
(Author), Tom Freeman (Illustrator). The book contains photographs, paintings by Tom
Freeman, and soldier and civilian testimonies.

c) Life Magazine Pearl Harbor: America's Call to Arms by editors of Time Life
(Author), Hugh Sidey (Introduction)

d) Remember Pearl Harbor: Japanese And American Survivors Tell Their Stories
by Thomas B. Allen. This is a narrative book complied from first-person oral histories,
striking photographs, combined with excellent maps.
5. Research and discuss the make-up of the Axis of Power in Europe, how the U.S.
entered the war with Japan, and then Nazi Germany, and how WW II became a reality.

6. View actual video footage of the bombing, from United Streaming, a Discovery
Education site: http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm.

7. Read and use investigative reporting with a replica newspaper, a primary source, from
the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

8. Research and study the reasons for interment camps, where they were located, and
what life was like inside them for the Japanese Americans sent there.

9. Observe a part of the most current movie production of Pearl Harbor, produced
Touchstone Pictures in 2001 that depicts a dramatized portrayal of the bombing at Pearl
Harbor and across sections of Hawai’i.

10. Visit Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri. This will occur at
the very end of the unit on January 14, 2008.

11. Explore the American Memory Web site to view photographs and listen to audio
interviews from various parts of the U.S., the day after the bombing.

Within American Memory, students will visit, investigate, and document

findings, responding to an essential question. This question will require the students to
ask their own questions in order to locate information need to give a complete answer.
They will also be given the opportunity to locate bits of information of their own interest
within the scope of the topic from the sections of American Memory listed below.
For those students who will have difficulty deciding what they could be looking
for, a list of terms and topics will be provided to find in their perusing of the sites.
Students will work in groups of three during their research. Groups could be either
determined prior to the unit, by evaluating their current learning abilities at the time or
allow students to choose their own grouping. To assist students with the navigating of
each site, step-by-step teacher modeling will establish the guidelines for consistent and
careful searching. This will take time, and repetition of procedures will be important in
the beginning. Monitoring through this activity will occur to assure students are
successfully navigating to photographs and audio primary sources, and accessing them
correctly.

a) American Memory – After The Day of Infamy

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afcphhtml/afcphhome.html

After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl
Harbor presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months
following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities
and towns across the United States. A second series of interviews, called "Dear Mr.
President," was recorded in January and February 1942. They feature a wide diversity of
opinion concerning the war, giving a portrait of everyday life in America as the U.S.
entered WW II.

By studying these primary source historical documents, students can begin to

understand how citizens of all ages, families and businesses pitched in to help fight for
freedom abroad.

b) The Learning Page within the American Memory site: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/

This site provides over 7 million historical documents, photographs, maps, films, and
audio recordings.

“On the Homefront, America during WWI and WW II – Gallery of Resources.

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/homefront/index.html

These activities are taken from this site, using primary sources. Students can
search the collections with a scavenger hunt activity using a list of terms to search,
developed from brainstorming with the students beforehand. With the photographs,
students can develop scavenger hunt type questions related to the image. With audio,
students can document in their journal one thing the person said that stuck out, or
reminded them of something they knew or had heard before. Students will use a historic
photograph of a street scene, and give an oral description of the sights, sounds, and smells
that surround the scene, presenting evidence from the photograph itself and other sources
about the time period. Student will select a historical photograph and predict what will
happen one minute and one hour after the photograph or film was taken. Students will
explain the reasoning behind their predictions.
Where there are audio interviews, students will complete this next activity by
listening to an audio recording and respond by writing their answers to the following
questions.
What is the speaker's key message?
What is the speaker's point of view?
Students will complete this activity on a day when we have access to 24 laptops to assure
the development of individual perspectives. A follow-up whole group discussion will
focus on the language, style of speaking, and recording techniques of the time period.

c) American Memory Timeline: The Learning Page: Great Depression and World War
II, 1929-1945: Japanese American Internment Camp
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/wwarii/japanam.html
Students will peruse this site in their groups, have mini-discussions and record a
collective perspective of what they observe in the photographs. They will then view the
following section link to this site page: “Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-
American Internment at Manzanar”. Students will continue their small group discussions.

Additional pages from Memory America that will be used as additional resources:

d) The Learning Page: Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945: Citizen
Contributions to the War Effort
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/wwarii/citizen.html

e) “We Can Do It” – Woman Defense Workers

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/wwarii/defense.html

Processes individuals might have to undertake.

All students will have access to the Internet using a laptop computer. At most given times
it will be two students to one laptop, and at other times their own individual laptop.
Students will be given and modeled specific instructions on using search engines, ethic
rules guideline, copyright laws, summarizing and paraphrasing techniques, information
and note collecting procedures and investigation strategies, such as “observe, think and
ask”.

Reasons why I choose this approach.

To expect a learning experience, with retention, the importance of maintaining student

interest, motivation and attention has to become an important focus for consistent
monitoring and journaled observing. The intent is to collect insights into students’
behavior and attitude during the process of a multi-week project. This will influence the
pace and show areas of long and short term needed improvements to this plan. Therefore,
using a multi-media approach utilizing digital, audio, text, video and multimedia software
and other technology aids and tools, students will lessen the chances of anyone become
bored or dissatisfied with any one media technology.

Support structures to be put in place to ensure a measure of success.

This unit will also be used by the other fifth grade teacher and class, with the teacher
monitoring and directing the learning. With two teachers presenting this unit,
collaboration, support and reflection will be incorporated throughout the duration of the
unit. This will ensure the needs of all students and objectives are met.

How I would evaluate the plan to ensure it does what it is supposed to

do.

The determining factors for evaluating success, retention and attitudinal interest will
result from monitoring student responses from the use of essential questioning with the
Bloom’s Taxonomy. Student responses during discussions, check-ins, and reporting
sessions will indicate success of this plan. Three culminating projects will also provide
the necessary data to analyze levels of learning to measure this plan’s effectiveness.

The first one will be a book report for Under The Blood Red Sun, showcasing their
reporting in a presentation of their choice. Several formats for publishing their report will
be provided to choose from. The second one will be a multimedia presentation of
students’ choice of media technology. Groups of three students will work collaboratively
to show in their report what they learned about Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941,
Japanese Interment Camps, and civilian attitudes and perspectives of the bombing. The
third, and final project, will be visiting Pearl Harbor, which includes the Arizona
Memorial and Museum, and the USS Missouri. As an assessment tool, the students will
give an oral presentation on any aspect of the time period studied in this unit. First, they
will complete an individual reflection paper that uses questions covering what the saw,
experienced, and felt at Pearl Harbor, as well as about the historical events that took place
and the people involved. In their groups they will compare and compile observations
from their notes. Together they will prepare their oral presentation using any primacy
source information they previously collected. They will be able to use any available
supportive media presentation tools to verify their findings. They will also include
personal notes on what they personally gained from this unit.