Links to the Past: Teacher Page

Students use documents from California As I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900, in American Memory to create a script depicting the motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations of immigrants who settled California between 1849 and 1900. The finished product will be a hyperscript, an online written dialogue, containing links to illustrative written materials, images, and sound files from American Memory collections.

Lesson Preparation

1. Select four excerpts of personal narratives describing the experience of modern immigrants to California. These narratives can be drawn from a variety of historical and contemporary sources:
   • Stories of Asian immigration to the San Francisco Bay Area (such as those found in Elaine Kim's East to America:  Korean American Life Stories);
   • Accounts of migration to the Bay Area in the 1960s by people seeking political and cultural freedom (examples may be found in Irwin Unger's The Times Were a Changin':   The Sixties Reader);
   • Recent accounts of people coming to Silicon Valley as part of the new "digital gold rush" found in contemporary news sources.
2. Print out copies of the four selections for distribution.

Classroom Activity

1. Explain that the class will be reading accounts of personal experiences of contemporary immigrants to California, and later, personal narratives of earlier settlers who immigrated to California in the period 1849-1900.
2. Explain to the students that in reading these personal accounts, they will be seeking answers to the following questions, which are applicable to emigrants during the Gold Rush, the 1960s, and the recent "digital gold rush." These questions relate to four "themes": the immigrants' motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations:
   1. Why did people leave their homes to come to California?
   2. What did they expect to find in California? How did they expect resettlement to change their lives?
   3. What fears did they have about the journey and their lives once they got there?
   4. Was their experience what they had expected? If not, how was it different?

3. As a class, brainstorm keywords/adjectives that demonstrate the four themes identified in these questions. Have one student record the results of the brainstorming session.
4. Provide students with copies of excerpts from the four contemporary narratives.

5. Students will spend the remainder of the period reading the excerpts from the narratives to answer the questions and identify the four themes. For each of these themes, students will highlight one piece of evidence found in the text.
6. Using the questions provided above, the students will explain in a journal entry how the evidence they have discovered in the text reveals the immigrants' motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations. (This assignment may be completed as homework.)

Lesson Preparation

1. Compile the results of the classroom brainstorming session and create a list of useful keywords for searching. Prepare a printed handout with these keywords.
2. Print out copies of the Student Page and Sample Hyperscript for classroom distribution.

Classroom Activity

1. Demonstrate the basic search features of American Memory. Show students the differences between a keyword, subject, and title search in order to maximize their results. Show students how to compile a "bookmark" or "favorites" file to collect and organize their research results.

Note:  How to Link and Bookmark in the How To section of Getting Started on The Learning Page explains how to link and bookmark American Memory items.

2. Provide students with copies of the handout giving useful keywords for searching.
3. Using the search strategies developed in the previous classroom activity, students will search California As I Saw It, 1849-1900 for at least four documents depicting the motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations of settlers who immigrated to California between 1849 and 1900.
4. After selecting four documents from California As I Saw It, 1849-1900, students will search all American Memory collections for related pictures, movies, maps, and sound recordings to illustrate their script.
5. By searching American Memory, students can find the following items for linking to in their finished hyperscript:
   • Four references from personal narratives in California As I Saw It, 1849-1900 demonstrating the four themes (motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations);
   • Four related images from American Memory; and
   • Two related motion pictures or sound recordings from American Memory.

IMPORTANT: Have students print out the bibliographic information page for each of these items from American Memory for later use in assembling their script.

6. Provide students with printed copies of the Student Page and the Sample Hyperscript and explain the homework assignment, writing the script.

After searching the collections and locating relevant documents in California As I Saw It, 1849-1900, students write their scripts. Initially, the script will be written in a word-processing program. Students should keep in mind the texts, images, motion pictures, and sound recordings that they have selected from American Memory and indicate the points in the text where these items will be linked.

Using the Sample Hyperscript as a guide, students construct a dramatic scene that includes the following elements:

1. Scene Description
   Students should include the scene's time period and geographic location, a description of what is visible on stage, and a physical description of the characters and their clothing. This component should contain at least one link to an illustrative photograph or print from American Memory.
2. Characters
   Students should include at least two characters in the dialogue.
3. Author's Note
   Students should write a paragraph at the end of their dialogue to explain how the links they have selected illustrate the motivations, expectations, fears, and realizations of settlers in California during the time 1849-1900 period.

Offline Version:

Teachers who do not have access to HTML authoring software for their students to produce hyperscripts may choose to have them produce printed scripts using the following procedure:

1. Students use printouts of the online documents instead of using online versions.
2. Students produce a printed script, highlighting text where a link would be placed in an online version and writing an identifying number at the end of the sentence or next to an image. The number corresponds to the attached printout of the document.
3. As a final product, students compile a packet containing the script with highlighted text and printouts of the four relevant documents.

Lesson Preparation

Print out copies of How to Link and Bookmark and How to Print and Save in the Getting Started section of The Learning Page.

Classroom Activity

1. Students bring their completed script on a disk to class.
2. Explain to students the basic elements of an HTML document and demonstrate the basic commands of the HTML authoring program you will use.
3. Students cut and paste the text of their script into a blank page of an HTML authoring program.
4. Using the Sample Hyperscript (both paper copy and online version), show the students how their finished hyperscript will appear. The instructor may choose to follow another type of layout, if desired. The Sample Hyperscript is suggested as a standardization because of its readability.
5. Students convert their written script into a hyperscript using the HTML authoring program they have learned. Conversion may take place partly in class and partly as homework.
6. Demonstrate to the class how to insert images into an HTML document using the HTML authoring program.
7. Students insert the images that they have selected from American Memory in relevant locations in their hyperscript and place appropriate captions below each image.
8. Go to the How To section of Getting Started on The Learning Page:
   • How to Link and Bookmark has directions on how to create a permanent link to an American Memory document.
   • How to Print and Save explains how to save the various media files to your computer.
9. Students select relevant portions of text from their script to link to relevant American Memory documents, pictures, sound, and movie files.
10. Carefully following the directions for creating permanent links to American Memory items, students create the following links within their HTML script (Hyperscript):
• Four links, relevantly placed, connecting their script to textual documents found in California As I Saw It, 1849-1900. Each of the four links should provide an example of one of the four themes identified in the answers to the questions:
1. Why did people leave their homes to come to California?
2. What did they expect to find in California? How did they expect resettlement to change their lives?
3. What fears did they have about the journey and their lives once they got there?
4. Was their experience what they had expected? If not, how was it different?
• Links to at least four images found in American Memory that relate to the subject matter of their script.
• Links to at least two sound recordings or motion pictures found in American Memory that relate to the subject matter of their script.
• Links from the thumbnail images that they have used in their hyperscript to a larger version of the same image.
• Links from the captions of the images that they have used in their hyperscript to the image's bibliographic record.