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Sources
Each of a unit's six sources is displayed by choosing one of the source buttons at the top of the screen. Upon entering a unit, the first source is selected by default. Your students can tell which source is displayed by looking to see which button is showing the gold highlight state. By moving the cursor over a source button, a message is displayed giving your students a brief description of the source.
The first view of a source is a look at its data chart. The chart is divided into two sections. The right section consists of a table that displays information about the source. The top line tells students
The original sources vary greatly in size. The original charts, paintings, and photographs can be quite large. In order to keep load-times to a minimum we have reduced the size of these images to a size where they are small enough to load quickly but still large enough to be understood and analyzed. Conversely, text oriented sources like newspaper articles and letters can become difficult to read when they are scanned to be displayed. For this reason, written or printed sources are usually enlarged so that they can be more easily read.
(Students can find information about how much the online source was reduced or enlarged by looking for information in the Size line of the data table.)
the type of source that they are looking at, for example whether it's a photograph, letter, diary page, etc. The Year line will tell them as much as is known about the date when the source was created. If this line is marked "unknown," no information is available about when the source was created. The Source line will tell your students information that they can use to find the original source. For example the source Photo 1 in the Pillsbury unit can be found in the portrait
files at the Minnesota Historical Society. The Size line tells your students how much the online source image has been reduced or enlarged. Finally, the lower cell in the table is used to display a summary statement or extra information about the source.
The left side of the chart contains a reduced version of the source. This is known as a thumbnail image. It is useful for giving your students a quick idea of what the source looks like, and it takes less time to load than the actual source image. Beneath the thumbnail is a View button, used to get a closer look at the online version of the source.