The Georgia Historical Society (GHS) is dedicated to offering trustworthy resources that support K-12 teachers’ digital classrooms. Over the coming weeks GHS will be working diligently to provide educators and parents valuable tools and information to meet the needs of students during the Covid-19 school closures. The “Digital Resources for Georgia’s Students” blog series will explore GHS’s extensive catalog of online resources for learning Georgia and American history and offer strategies for using them at home or in a digital classroom.

The sudden shift to widespread, remote learning makes it necessary for teachers to utilize online resources that support digital learning. Digital learning is instructional practice that makes effective use of technology. Digital learning is not digitized learning.

Digitized education is the shift of routine instructional practices to a digital platform such as reading a textbook online or uploading an assignment for submission but lacks the requirement of higher order thinking skills.

Digital education should require students to be creative and think critically. For example, students could review a variety of multimedia sources, reflect on what can be learned from those sources, then create a product that illustrates what has been learned.

Georgia Historical Society online exhibits are excellent examples of digital learning resources for Georgia and American history.

Each online exhibit showcases a variety of items and artifacts from GHS collections. Students can analyze high resolution images of primary sources against the backdrop of recent historical scholarship placing each item within its historical context.

Students can explore online exhibits to learn, form opinions, and ask questions about important historical topics such as:

• Three Centuries of Georgia History is an educational online exhibit that includes documents, photographs, and other artifacts from the collections of the Georgia Historical Society. The exhibit examines the last three centuries of Georgia history from its colonial roots, to the height of the Plantation Era, through the sweeping changes of the Progressive Era. Teachers can download a PDF teacher guide on using the exhibit materials in the classroom.

• The African-American Life and Culture in the Georgia Lowcountry online exhibit uses maps, primary source image galleries, and a timeline to explore Ossabaw Island, Sapelo Island, and the Historic Landmark District of Savannah to learn the importance of these sites in understanding the African-American experience in the Georgia Lowcountry. The interactive case study uses the story of Ossabaw Island and five primary sources from the Ossabaw Island and Torrey Family PapersMS 1362 to explore different aspects of the African-American experience on Ossabaw Island.

• The Mapping Slave Resistance in Antebellum Georgia interactive map shows recognized Underground Railroad sites across the nation and marks the sites in Georgia where any form of slave resistance or rebellion occurred. Through this map, GHS aims to demonstrate some of the many ways enslaved Georgians worked towards emancipation years before Abraham Lincoln declared it so.

• “Hidden Histories” is an online exhibit showcasing a collaborative project between the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Georgia Historical Society. Students use historic and contemporary photographs, artwork, maps, and literary resources to create their own original research and works of art related to historical marker subjects. “Hidden Histories” provides audiences with an in-depth look into the stories behind specific historical markers, displays relevant GHS archival material, and showcases student art inspired by the stories of our shared past.