WWI Resource

This year marks the beginning of the Centenary of the First World War.  No doubt there will be many websites, online archives, and activities for students online.  I would like to direct you to The First World War by the British National Archives.  There are several activities and collections which students may access to learn more about the Great War. WWI was more devastating to the UK than WWII.  In the US, we don’t discuss WWI as much, perhaps because our involvement came late and there was no attack on US soil, but for Britain, nearly a whole generation of young men was wiped out.  On a recent trip to the UK, I visited several war memorials and the surnames listed often included 4 or more of the same family—these were villages, not large towns.   In my reading, I discovered that this pattern was indeed repeated all over the island.  The First World War  includes access to diaries, digitized collections of materials from military branches, nurses and more, and podcasts.  There is a blog devoted to WWI and if your teachers are feeling really brave there is a crowd sourcing project, called Operation War Diary which students could participate in.  A tutorial is offered to help volunteers to get started, and then they are asked to read and tag diary entries.  It might be a way to help kids get more personally involved with history and who knows, you might find the next Daniel Boorstin in one of your classes.