Monday, July 11, 2005

New Tennessee History Resource for Teachers

Many educrats fuss about unfunded Federal mandates...here's a State mandate that until recently teachers had to meet by their own devises.

When the Tennessee Department of Education ended mandatory semester-long Tennessee history courses for middle school students a few years ago, most history teachers got a lesson in supply and demand.

The state still requires bits of Tennessee history be taught to students at all grade levels, but many teachers are lacking the materials they need to fulfill that requirement.

(snip)

In November 2004, [Bill] Carey joined forces with Web designer Tim Moses and state Rep. Rob Briley, D-Nashville, to lay the groundwork for the Tennessee History for Kids Web site. Carey began gathering information for the site, Moses created a basic design, and Briley promoted the site to state lawmakers.

From the Jackson Sun

I'm glad to see someone take this in hand and provide a logical solution. The site is no where near complete with another 24 of 95 counties unfinished. The counties that are covered are light on information but if folks will consider this a cooperative effort, this could really be a wonderful resource for all Tennesseans. I'd like to encourage this effort. And if I know anything about history and webmastering, it will probably never really be 'finished'.

Of course another resource readily available and tremendously indepth that many Tennessee homeschoolers have been using for years is the Notgrass Company's "Exploring Tennessee". I've known these folks for years and heard them speak. They know their stuff. Yes, it comes from a Christian perspective, but schools are used to excising that so that shouldn't be an insurmountable problem. ;-)

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