NHD Theme Book 2016 | Page 66

A 64 NATIONAL HISTORY DAY 2016 for understanding global connections while also giving them ideas for honing in on a more specific topic. From the first uses of fire through the twentieth century space race, this series is a rich resource for students in the early stages of their research. key strength of the 2016 theme is the room it gives for students to connect larger global interactions to specific people and locations. The focus on exploration and encounter can also lead them to explore primary source materials from the eighteenth century and earlier, and to grapple with important questions about these sources. HISTORY has an extensive set of short videos on History.com about key explorers from Hernando de Soto to Marco Polo to Ponce de León (www.history.com/topics/exploration). When watching these videos students can consider the sources historians use to piece together narratives about exploration and encounter. In one short video on History.com about one of Columbus’ voyages to the New World, students can learn how journals from the voyage reveal the delicate balance of power aboard the ship and the constant threat of rebellion by the crew. Encourage students to think critically about the sources used to tell the story of early exploration and analyze the ways these stories are visually depicted. Prompt them to discuss and debate choices about music, costume, and voiceover in portraying early explorers and indigenous peoples as they choose their own focus and sources for NHD projects. New scholarship over the past decade has focused on bringing the stories of native peoples into historical scholarship in a way that accounts for the complexity of indigenous groups. Whether students choose a fifteenth century topic or focus on a later period, short videos can help them build critical thinking skills and carefully analyze how they use primary sources— particularly important when researching indigenous peoples. A new field of study known as “Big History” offers a multi-disciplinary approach, weaving together insights from biology, chemistry, physics and other disciplines to show how humans have shaped the world and how the Earth has developed over time as the result of human interaction. The Big History series (www.history.com/ shows/big-history) can apply to all aspects of the 2016 theme, but might be particularly useful for examining the concept of “exchange.” Each episode of the series focuses on a single commodity such as salt or gold and shows how and why these items have become central to everyday lives over time. How do commodities gain exchange value, and how do they shape power relations? These questions can be extremely compelling when students can connect them to things they use every day. Big History looks at the In a scene from Mankind The Story of All of Us traders acquire new commodities along the si