History Wired: A Few of Our Favorite Things
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 6–12
- Subjects
- arts (crafts, folk art), social studies (civics and government, economics, United States history)
- Provider
- Smithsonian Institution
Legal
This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.
Wow. Talk about helping to make connections with historical content! The Smithsonian Institution does it again with the HistoryWired website. Like a private tour through the collection, the site lets visitors choose what they want to see; curators explain the items' significance and provide links to other related information. In an effort to share more of the collection with the public (did you realize less than 5 percent is actually on display at any given time?), curators have chosen objects with a story to tell. Some are everyday objects, some are unique, but all are a glimpse into a time and place in American history.
The site resembles a wall, and each block in the wall is a separate object from the collection. Objects are arranged according to category. When you click on an object block, you will get a drop-down menu asking if you want to Zoom In or Learn More About This Object. If you select Learn More, the full description of the object appears in a new browser window, including collection location (Web-only or on display at the museum), physical description, images, other related media such as sound clips, and links to more information on the Web.
Each object is also categorized according to a theme. For example, Morse's Daguerreotype Equipment, mid-1800s is in the Photography section of the page, with lines drawn to indicate connections to the themes of Accomplishment, Art, and Science. You can use the themes to find related objects. Simply click on the theme button and all objects categorized under that theme change color. If you select multiple themes, the objects categorized under more of the themes appear darker orange. Using the theme buttons, the visitor may find objects significant to more than one theme. For example, the World War I Intelligence Test, 1918 is categorized under both Medicine and Military history.
Navigation on the HistoryWired site is enhanced by a timeline. The timeline, across the top of the object map, allows the user to narrow the choice of objects according to a date range. Using both the themes and timeline, students can find objects significant to Commerce in just the 1800s or objects related to Leisure from the second half of the 20th century. Anything falling outside the date range appears grayed out.
