The Monthly Reader: A Digital Anthology
created and written by Mr. Burke/English
INTRODUCTION
This online anthology was created by Jim
Burke. I have adapted it to fit into the
curriculum for the Senior Seminar class.
It offers you an array of great reading experiences. The readings
included on this page are specifically used, unless otherwise noted, for the
Monthly Reading assignment. I have screened and evaluated these sites for their
content. If you encounter anything on these web sites you think is inappropriate,
please inform me immediately. If you need help reading one of the types of
texts you find here, please see me.
- This I
Believe: This I Believe invites people to write about the
core beliefs that guide your daily life. NPR airs these personal
statements from listeners each Monday. The producers hope to create a
picture of the American spirit in all its rich complexity. This I
Believe is based on a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by
acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. In creating This I Believe,
Murrow said the program sought "to point to the common meeting
grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of
our civilization."
- Inventor of the Week:
Each week MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) profiles a different
inventor, from the past or present. Visit the current Inventor of the
Week, or Browse the Archives, where you can search for information on a
specific inventor or invention.
- The History of US
(Webisodes): Freedom is what has drawn
to America countless human beings from around the world; it is what
generations of men and women have lived and died for; it is, in a profound
sense, our nation's highest calling. This is also the story of the chief
obstacles to American freedom -- the "unfreedoms"
that have littered our national story, and in some cases have called its
very integrity into question. But despite all the mistakes and all the
tragic setbacks, there is an overarching positive message to this series.
This is a history of the United States as the unfolding, inspiring story
of human liberties aspired to and won.
- Teens and Money:
This website offers fun, short, and profitable articles about money. All
articles are written specifically for teens. Whether you want to make a
million, learn how the stock market works, or how to get more money from
your parents, this site if for you.
- New
York Times' "Portraits of Grief": I added this page
because these people lead interesting lives. I also include it here so we
can honor them so that from their lives and the reminder of their loss, we
might better appreciate and live our own.
- Daily
Cartoon: While you can, if you wish, check out other cartoons
listed in the left margin, it is the cartoon Zits that inspired me to add
this link. The cartoonist explores the life of adolescents and their
relationships with parents in a humorous but intelligent way.
- Daily Word: Every word
they choose is worth knowing, but what is interesting is the story behind
the word. Every day you get a word and its history. For those who like
language or want to improve their vocabulary, this is a fun pick.
- Daily History:
This site is part of the Library of Congress's American Memory Project.
Each day they create a remarkable page about an important person or
historical event related that date. For those interested in looking
further, each page also includes many additional links for further study.
Each day you will find an image, a story, and an important piece of
information about your own country.
- Biography.com Interested in Jackie
Robinson? Julius Caesar? Albert Einstein? Go to Biography.com and type in
the name of someone that has always interested you.
- San Francisco Exploratorium:
An amazing site that features online exhibits, experiences, and resources
for those who love science and ideas.
Reading Literature
- Searching
for Books that Touched Lives: This article just appeared in the Washington
Post. It is about a teacher in Washington, D.C. who read my book I
Hear America Reading and asked her students to bring in the books that
meant the most to them. Consider writing about the book you would bring in
and what it means to you.
- Favorite Poem
Project: This page offers a list of Americans' favorite poems;
each poem is available in written form but also as a very cool video
(never more than five minutes) based on the poem. This is one of my
favorite sites.
- Daily Poetry: This site features a
different poet every day. The poems are usually short and almost always
interesting. If you like poetry you will like this site.
- Poetry 180:
This site is devoted to high school students. US poet laureate Billy
Collins feels that poetry must be read and enjoyed, not constantly
"tied to a chair and beaten with a hose until it says what it
means." Here you will find 180 poems, one for each day of the school year, that you will enjoy and want to write about.
Reading Images
- NEW:
National Gallery of Art Virtual Tours: The National Gallery in
Washington, D.C. offers excellent virtual tours and exhibits of different
artists. Highly recommended.
- Getty's Art Education Web
Site: This site offers ongoing exhibits of interest to anyone
interested in art. Because the site is targeted for schools, the contents
tend to be of special interest to kids. Very good site whose contents
change regularly; so come back often.
- The
Dorothea Lange Photographic Archive: Housed at the Oakland Museum,
Lange's photographs provide a powerful and useful set of images for the
classroom. Many teachers studying the Depression and authors like John
Steinbeck will find this site invaluable.
- Making Sense of Modern
Art: "Focusing on key works in the Museum's permanent
collection, the newest version of MSoMA provides
an engaging guide to modern and contemporary art." (from SFMOMA web
site)
- Smithsonian
Institute Image Gallery: The ultimate American museum offers
outstanding collections of photographs from around the world. .
- Picturing
the Century: 100 Years of Photography from the National Archives .
The galleries are arranged by broad chronology (A New Century, the Great
War, etc.); the portfolios include works by Ansel
Adams, Dorothea Lange and other great chroniclers of American life.
- Smithsonian American Art Museum:
A site that honors our diverse artistic traditions; includes interactive
exhibits and experiences. You will love this site.
- Time magazine's Pictures of
the Week: Time magazine offers a compelling visual
documentation of the week through photographs. The site also includes
easily accessible archives of past weeks. Every picture here is
worth...well, you guessed it: a thousand words.
Reading Letters and Journals
- NEW:
Milestone Documents: The following is a list of 100 milestone
documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration,
and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle
United States history from 1776 to 1965.
- NEW: Teen Diaries:Since 1996,
the Teenage Diaries series has been giving tape recorders to young people
around the country to report on their own lives. They conduct interviews,
keep an audio journal and record the sounds of daily life usually
collecting more than 40 hours of raw tape over the course of a year.
Reading Multimedia Texts
- NEW: This American Life: Here
is how they describe their own wonderful show: "We view the show as
an experiment. We try things. There was the show where we taped for 24
hours in an all-night restaurant. And the show where we put a band
together from the musicians' classified ads. And the show where we
followed a group of swing voters for months, recorded their reactions to
everything that happened in the election up through their final decision.
And the show where one of our contributors went on a fast to find out if,
in fact, fasting leads to enlightenment as promised.We
sometimes think of it as a documentary show for people who normally hate
documentaries. A public radio show for people who don't necessarily care
for public radio. In addition to the radio show, our staff has a movie
deal with Warner Brothers which may lead to stories from the radio show
being made into motion pictures."
- America's Story:
This well-organized site offers a range of texts that explore people,
events, music, and trends in American history. Articles are easy to find
and offer interesting information and useful links about people and events
worth knowing about.
- Lost and Found Sounds:
A very cool site, created and run by The
Kitchen Sisters. These radio pieces combine storytelling and history,
sounds and images. This site and their work has
won many awards. For those who like to hear their stories read by great
voices, with rich textures of sound behind them, you can't go wrong. A
long menu of pieces to choose from each month. All are short, all are very
good.
Reading Speeches
- American Rhetoric:
Years worth of great speeches are captured here, as well as some
interesting exercises for students of speech and American History. Check
out the Daily Speech or the Most Requested Speeches or dig deeper and look
at the searchable database or the 100 Great Speeches.
Reading the Media
- American Rock-n-Roll Hall
of Fame: The title tells you all you need to know. A very good web
site with interesting exhibits about musicians and music.
- Cinema: How Are Hollywood
Films Made? Inspired by programs from the American Cinema video
series in the Annenberg/CPB Multimedia Collection, "Cinema" explores
the creative process of filmmaking from the screenwriter's words to the
editor's final cut. Includes interactive activities from writing dialogue
for a scene to managing the production of a film.
- The Newshour Essays: These five-minute video
essays appear regularly at the end of The Newshour.
They are wonderful commentaries on our society, but more importantly they
are good. They incorporate words and images to help us understand art,
sports, politics, and ourselves. You can view the actual video-essays
through the web site. When you go to this page you see a nicely organized
list of topics, complete with descriptions of what they talk about in the
essay.
- Newseum: A
very cool site that offers those interested in news an interactive history
of...the news. Of special interest are such features as "Capture the
Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs," an online exhibit of
photographs that show us the images behind the stories we read. You will
like this site if you like: images, cultures, news, or technology.
Reading Information
- The World
Question Center 2001 The Edge is a meeting place for thinkers who
share their Big Questions and answers to them. Currently, there are
responses to "What questions are no longer being asked?"
- Internet
Women's History Sourcebook: For Women's History Month, start with
this thorough set of links to primary sources in women's history world
wide. For major historical periods and for different continents and
countries, you'll find documents on general resources, great women of that
time and place, the structure of women's lives, women's agency, feminism
(where present), women's oppression, and gender construction.
- Inventor's Museum: This
site includes concise articles about different inventions and inventors.
The inventions and inventors are organized into different categories for
easy reference. You could look, for example, under "Women
Inventors," or under "Medical Inventions." (Note: the
previous link for this "died." I am hoping this new link serves
as a useful substitute.)
The Most Influential People of
the 20th Century
To mark the turn of the century, TIME has profiled 100 individuals -- from five
fields of endeavor -- who helped shape the last 100 years.
- Leaders and
Revolutionaries
Twenty people who helped define the political and social fabric of
our times
- Artists and
Entertainers
Twenty pioneers of human expression who enlightened and enlivened
us
- Builders and
Titans
Twenty innovators who changed how the world works
- Scientists
and Thinkers
People who overthrew our inherited ideas about logic, language, learning,
mathematics, economics and even space and time
- Heroes and Icons
Twenty people who articulate the longings of the last 100 years,
exemplifying courage, selflessness, exuberance, superhuman ability and
amazing grace.
- Albert Einstein:
Person of the Century
He was the iconic 20th century scientist, the bumbling professor with the
German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable,
like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy haired
visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered
about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably
profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking
about it, that the universe was not as it seemed. Read the full story by
Frederic Golden