The American Vision Modern Times © 2010

Unit 3: Imperialism and Progressivism, 1890-1920

Historical Thinking Activities

Assignment: Create a Multimedia Presentation about the Progressive Era
Many Americans tried to improve society and reform the government during the Progressive Era. Among the factors that contributed to this period of reform were: the Women's Suffrage Movement, the campaign against child labor, worker's compensation laws, health codes to protect the public, the temperance movement, attempts to regulate big business, and efforts to reform the government to make it run more efficiently.

Assignment Task List
Step 1: Choose which forms of media you want to include in your presentation. Video? Sound? Animation? Photographs? Graphics? Others?

Step 2: Analyze which of these media forms your computer supports. Is there a program you can use to develop all types of media into a presentation?

Step 3: Research primary sources related to the Progressive Era. Select media to use for your presentation such as photographs, text, and graphics. You can use these primary sources along with other Internet resources to develop your presentation. Use must two or more sources to create your presentation.

PDF Sources:

By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920)
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916
Prohibition in the Progressive Era
Temperance & Prohibition

Internet Sources on the Progressive Era 

Labor Issues:

Library of Congress
National Child Labor Committee Photograph Collection
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/207-b.html

Ohio History Central
Workmen's Compensation
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1515

Temperance:

Library of Congress
Home Sweet Home
Life in Nineteenth-Century Ohio: Temperance
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/ohio/ohio-temperance.html

Library of Congress
Pictorial Americana: Temperance
http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/picamer/paTemper.html

Library of Congress
Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1929
Prohibition: A Case Study of Progressive Reform
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/progress/prohib/prohib.html

Ohio State University
Temperance and Prohibition
http://prohibition.osu.edu/

Woman's Christian Temperance Union
History of the WCTU
http://www.wctu.org/history.html

Tenements:

Library of Congress
Immigration . . . Italian: Tenements and Toil
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/alt/italian6.html

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html

Woman Suffrage:

Library of Congress
By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfwhtml/vfwhome.html

National Archives
Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/woman-suffrage/

Step 4: Create a presentation using multimedia software. Identify the two most important movements of the Progressive Era, in your opinion, and create a multimedia presentation that examines the history, goals, and outcomes of each movement.

Step 5: Present and defend your findings to the class. Be sure to thoroughly develop each movement and be prepared to answer questions.

Step 6: Review your work against the checklist below. Revise your presentation as needed.