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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