National Day of Listening

cc Licenced Flickr Photo shared by Matthew Clements

The day after Thanksgiving, marks the fourth annual the National Day of Listening.  And while the observance is an unofficial one started by NPR's StoryCorps, it does serve as a reminder to take the time to record the stories of our families and friends.  It is also the perfect opportunity for teachers to think about how to use oral histories in their classrooms.There are a number of online teachers' guides for conducting an oral history project, including Using Oral History (Library of Congress), What Is Oral History (History Matters), and Gathering the Forgotten Voices (Tulane University). In addition, StoryCorps has also developed a list of Great Questions that can be adapted for a classroom oral history project.

To find oral history projects available on the internet, try the following resources:

• American Slave Narratives (University of Virginia)
• Conversations with America (Chicago History Museum)
• Conversations with History (University of California, Berkeley)
• Oral History Archives (Rutgers University)
• Mississippi Oral History Project (University of Southern Mississippi)
• Shoah Foundation Institute (University of Southern California)
• Southern Oral History Program (University of North Carolina)
• Telling Their Stories (Urban School of San Francisco)
• Tibet Oral History Project
• Veterans History Project (Library of Congress)
• The Vietnam Center and Archive (Texas Tech University)
• Voices of the Dust Bowl (Library of Congress)
• What Did You Do in the War Grandma? (Brown University)
• The Whole World Was Watching (Brown University)