David Walbert
David Walbert is Editorial and Web Director for LEARN NC in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education. He is responsible for all of LEARN NC’s educational publications, oversees development of various web applications including LEARN NC’s website and content management systems, and is the organization’s primary web, information, and visual designer. He has worked with LEARN NC since August 1997.
David holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Garden Spot: Lancaster County, the Old Order Amish, and the Selling of Rural America, published in 2002 by Oxford University Press. With LEARN NC, he has written numerous articles for K–12 teachers on topics such as historical education, visual literacy, writing instruction, and technology integration.
Resources created by David Walbert
Records 121–140 of 194 displayed: go to page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
- Mapping the Great Wagon Road
- In Colonial North Carolina, page 5.2
- The Great Wagon Road took eighteenth-century colonists from Philadelphia west into the Appalachian mountains and south into the North Carolina Piedmont. This article describes the route and its history and offers two detailed maps, one from 1751 and one from the present, for comparison.
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- Migration into and out of North Carolina: Exploring census data
- In North Carolina in the New Nation, page 4.2
- Just how many people left North Carolina in the first half of the nineteenth century -- and where did they go? To answer questions like this, the best place to turn is census records. The census can't tell us why people moved, but a look at the numbers can give us a sense of the scale of the migration.
- Format: activity
- By David Walbert.
- The mystery of the first Americans
- In Prehistory, contact, and the Lost Colony, page 2.2
- In the second half of the twentieth century, archaeologists agreed that those “first Americans” migrated from Asia across Beringia and into North America between fourteen and twenty thousand years ago. Recently, though, new evidence has come to light that has led some archaeologists to doubt that theory and to suggest new possibilities.
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- Nat Turner's Rebellion
- In North Carolina in the New Nation, page 9.1
- In 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved man in Southampton, Virginia, led an insurrection in which a small band of slaves and free African Americans killed fifty-five whites. After the revolt, white militias and mobs hunted down blacks suspected of taking part in this or other insurrections, and southern states passed harsh new laws restricting the freedoms of both slaves and free blacks.
- Format: article
- By L. Maren Wood and David Walbert.
- Nathaniel Macon on democracy
- In North Carolina in the New Nation, page 1.7
- Excerpt of a speech by Nathaniel Macon, arguing against the "Midnight Judges Act" of 1801, in which he summarizes the political philosophy of Democratic-Republicans. Primary source includes historical commentary.
- Format: speech
- Commentary and sidebar notes by David Walbert.
- Natural diversity
- In Prehistory, contact, and the Lost Colony, page 1.1
- North Carolina has within its borders the highest mountains east of the Mississippi River, a broad, low-lying coastal area, and all the land in between. That variety of landforms, elevations, and climates has produced as diverse a range of ecosystems as any state in the United States. It has also influenced the way people have lived in North Carolina for thousands of years.
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- The natural history of North Carolina
- In Prehistory, contact, and the Lost Colony, page 1.2
- If the five billion years of the earth's history were condensed into a single day, humans would have arrived in North Carolina just two tenths of a second before midnight! This article summarizes the major biological and geological events in North Carolina's history and explains how the land and environment of today came to be.
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- Naval stores and the longleaf pine
- In Colonial North Carolina, page 6.4
- North Carolina's extensive longleaf pine forests provided the natural resources needed to produce materials needed to build and maintain ships -- not only timber but tar, pitch, and rosin. These "naval stores" became North Carolina's most important indusstry in the eighteenth century, but today, the longleaf pine forests are nearly gone.
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- New Spring Goods
- In North Carolina in the Civil War and Reconstruction, page 7.16
- Advertisements in a Plymouth, North Carolina, newspaper in May 1865, celebrating the return of peace -- and of consumer goods from the North. Includes historical commentary.
- Format: newspaper
- Commentary and sidebar notes by David Walbert and L. Maren Wood.
- Not your mother's math teacher
- North Carolina's 2001–2002 Teacher of the Year, Carmen Wilson, talks about real-world math and teachers' roles as professionals.
- By David Walbert.
- The not-so-famous person report
- In Rethinking Reports, page 3.2
- Instead of teaching the history of the famous, use research in primary sources to teach students that the past and present were made by people like them.
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- Now what? A President considers a career change
- In Rethinking Reports, page 1.2
- In this alternative to the dreaded "President Report," students write a resumé for an ex-president.
- By Melissa Thibault and David Walbert.
- Obtaining permission for copyrighted materials
- In Web Publishing & Collaboration Guide, page 3.5
- If your desired use of a copyrighted work does not fall under fair use and the work is not licensed for public use, you must ask permission before using it. Be sure to think through carefully what...
- Format: article
- By David Walbert.
- Of the inlets and havens of this country
- In Colonial North Carolina, page 2.7
- Excerpt from John Lawson's 1709 A New Voyage to Carolina detailing the geography of North Carolina's coast. Includes historical commentary and notes about how the coastline has changed since the colonial period.
- Format: book
- Commentary and sidebar notes by David Walbert.
- Outside wall and ceiling beams at Allen House
- This photograph of an outside wall of the Allen House, built around 1782 in Alamance County, N.C., shows its wood and mud construction. Ceiling beams, fitting into notches in the outer wall beams, can be seen protruding from the wall.
- Format: image/photograph
- Outside wall at Allen House
- This photograph of an outside wall of the Allen House, built around 1782 in Alamance County, N.C., shows its wood and mud construction. Ax marks in the wood suggest how the beams were cut.
- Format: image/photograph
- A picture is worth a thousand words
- An example of how a single image can provoke discussions at all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.
- By Bobby Hobgood and David Walbert.
- Poor Richard's Almanack
- In Colonial North Carolina, page 6.12
- Excerpts from the alamanc published by Benjamin Franklin show what colonial Americans read and what topics interested them, including weather predictions, religion, history, astrology, and schedules of court dates. Includes both images of the original almanacs and transcriptions as well as historical commentary.
- Format: magazine
- Commentary and sidebar notes by L. Maren Wood and David Walbert.
- Prairie outside Town Creek Indian Mound
- The tall grasses growing outside the palisade of Town Creek Indian Mound approximate the area's native prairie. When the town was inhabited by Indians of the Pee Dee culture, around the eleventh century, it was probably surrounded by this kind of vegetation....
- Format: image/photograph
- Preparing for battle
- Reenactors playing the part of British soldiers before the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.
- Format: image/photograph
