The findingDulcinea Blog

Discovering Primary Source Material

Primary source material—such as journals, speeches, letters, contemporary news reports, government documents, photographs, artifacts and maps—is an invaluable resource in understanding history.

“Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period,” writes the Library of Congress.

Digitized archives make it possible for students or amateur researchers to access and search primary source collections. Much of the material is not easily accessed through search engines.

Searching for a specific Civil War battle, for example, will lead you to plenty of secondary sources and a few primary sources. However, you are not likely to find battle reports and letters sent between Union and Confederate leaders and their respective War and Naval Departments, which are available in the Official Records. Similarly, you will probably miss first-hand accounts written by those leaders after the war, which have been collected in the Battles & Leaders of the Civil War and the Southern Historical Society Papers.

Our goal at findingDulcinea is to direct you to collections like these. As we develop our history section, each guide will have sections devoted to primary source archives. Currently, the guides on Native Americans, the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II all have these sections. Most of our On This Day features link to primary sources either in tables at the end of a section or in a separate Reference section at the end of the article.

For help in learning how to use primary sources, visit the Library of Congress’ Primary Source Sets section and the National Archives’ Teaching With Documents section. Both provide lesson plans on a wide variety of topics.

Denis Cummings

Steal Our Homework! Plus 7 More Ways Teachers Can Enjoy Dulcinea Media

A lot of people ask us, “So what is Dulcinea Media?” Translation: “How do you actually make my life easier?” We’ve come up with some responses.

1. Steal Our Homework
Each Thursday, the Digital Teachers’ Lounge, our blog for teachers, educators and librarians, publishes a quiz about the week’s Happy Birthday and On This Day features. The answer key is released the following Monday. This makes a great homework or extra credit assignment.

2. Save Time Hunting Down Sites
When assigning a research project, you may spend your weekends searching for credible resources your students can use. Our Web guides do that for you. For example, our Web Guide to U.S. History features only useful sites that cover the time of the early settlers to the 1970s, including primary sources.

3. Use Our Web Links
Don’t teach history? No problem. Find some of the best sites for your grade and subject in our Web Guides or on our Web Links page. It includes links by school level for Math, Science, Literature, Geography and four different languages. It also includes links for other topics such as Applying to College and Differentiated Instruction.

4. Try Our Search Engine
Did I mention we have our own search engine? It’s called SweetSearch [http://www.sweetsearch.com/] and it surfaces only the best sites—those used in our guides, features and news—plus others we’ve hand-picked.  Use it – and tell your students to use it – to find great resources on any subject, quickly and efficiently.

5. Give Your ESL Students a Hand
Because native Spanish-speaking students may have trouble finding resources on the Web, we created EncontrandoDulcinea. Now Spanish speaking students and their parents can locate the best sites in English and Spanish, for most academic subjects. Students that are learning English or Spanish can also read a number of our news and features on both sites.

6. Share Our Expert Tips for Writing Biographies
We’ve gathered advice from experts, authors, journalists and others to help students research and write a profile. We’ve also pointed them to some of the best sources. (Note: Every one of our Happy Birthday profiles includes a “Sources in this Story” bar highlighting sites we’ve used in our own research.)

7. Discuss Our News Stories
Each day we publish news stories for students. All of the content is based on, and links to, the best resources on the Web about the topic. Whether the focus is on the environment, technology, health or education, you’ll always find something worth chatting about.

8. Sign Up For Our Newsletter
We know teachers get tons of e-mails but this is one you’ll love. You’ll get our weekly quizzes (see No. 1) sent straight to your e-mail box. And you’ll also get a teaser for our weekly interview, where you can learn great tips about working with kids in schools and libraries.

Help us help you. E-mail us at info@dulcineamedia.com or direct message us on Twitter @findingEdu and let us know what we can do better. We’d love to hear from you.

How to Make and Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

New Year’s Eve is less than 48 hours away, so it’s about time we shared our 5 tips for making and keeping your New Year’s resolutions.

1. Think Hope, Not Guilt. Dr. Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford University, writes, “Other people's ideas of who you should be and what you should do can go right in the delete file.” New Year’s is a time to feel inspired, not ashamed. Look back on your favorites moment of 2009, and imagine 10 experiences you look forward to in 2010.

2. Choose One Thing. Just one. Stephen Covey, author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” suggests, “Make a promise and keep it.” Check in with yourself weekly. After successfully meeting one goal, you’ll have the confidence to take on another.

3. Get the Wording Right. Penelope Trunk, an author and founder of the blog “The Brazen Careerist,” says you should break down your goal into tasks. Instead of telling yourself you need to go to the gym, Trunk suggests saying, “I need to drive to the gym at 4:30 every day and I cannot drive out of the parking lot until 5:30.”

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help. Martha Beck, a life-coach, columnist and author, writing for Oprah.com, outlines four different personality types: quick starters, fact-finders, implementers, and follow-through types. When looking for support in committing to a resolution, partner with others who share your goal but have different strengths and weaknesses.

5. Track Your Success. Use a site like 43 Things to measure your success. Sign up, create an account, outline a strategy and find other people who share your goals.

Find more of the best sites for keeping your resolutions in findingDulcinea’s Web Guide to New Year’s Resolutions.

What I Didn’t Know About Tiananmen Square

Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel/AP

In the spring of 1988, I traveled to China with a small group of other high school students and a much larger group of older adults. I’ve always liked to say that I learned more about American tourists during that trip than I ever learned about the Chinese. There were the two ladies who refused to eat anything but white rice. The woman who had to keep purchasing new luggage to fit all the souvenirs she was buying. Her daughter, who was so focused on videotaping everything, that she never seemed to look at anything with her own eyes. The man who thought it was funny to kick the back of my seat on every short plane flight, and who apparently decided that the very real machete fight that we inadvertently witnessed and which left one man with serious head wounds was light entertainment put on for his benefit.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have any encounters with the people who actually lived there. Unlike my trip the previous year to what was then the Soviet Union, no one tried to block us from making contact. The other students and I talked with young people on the streets of Shanghai who were anxious to practice their English, waved to an adorable, rosy-cheeked kindergarten class who chanted “Good morning! Good morning!” as we passed, ignored the desperate vendors who tried to sell us trinkets through the windows of our bus and watched an elderly woman with bound feet painfully limp down a flight of steps in the Forbidden City, leaning on the arm of a soldier.

Although my high school friends and I felt that we were obviously better behaved travelers and more open to truly experiencing the country than the adults with us, that did not mean that we ever really had a clue about any of China’s most pressing political issues. One peaceful evening in Beijing, we lay in the middle of Tiananmen Square and sang “You Can Call Me Mao,” parodying a song popular at the time, Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” A little more than a year later, that spot was overrun with protesting students, tanks and soldiers firing on civilians.

It was deeply upsetting to me that a site I associated with a silly memory became associated in the eyes of the world with such horrifying bloodshed. It’s equally upsetting that in the 20 years since, the Chinese government has made significant efforts to obliterate all recall of that terrible event, and have forbidden people to commemorate it in any way. During the days leading up to the anniversary this year, authorities have tried to block discussion about it on the Internet.

Learn more about what happened in June 1989 by reading findingDulcinea’s Web Guide to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

I've Graduated from College. Now What?

Over dinner a few weeks ago, I listened to a group of my closest friends lamenting the economic crisis and the death grip it held on their efforts to find jobs. One friend pointed out that I was unusually calm, despite the fact that I had hardly started my job search and that those companies to which I had applied had turned me down. She suggested that I, with my optimistic temperament, write an article for findingDulcinea about how frenzied graduates should relax and try to have fun looking for jobs in today’s economy.

Weeks later, after a particularly painful evening of scouring idealist.org only to conclude that I am probably not skilled enough to even manage a hot dog cart, I came into work discouraged and exhausted. The Editor-in-Chief asked how things were going, and I confessed that the job search was taking its toll. When she suggested the same thing my friend had—that I write a graduates’ job search guide—I was stunned. Who am I to tell my peers how to find a job? I haven’t even found one for myself yet! I’ve lost all focus of what I want to do after graduation and have experienced only failure in my search efforts so far. But she insisted that I AM an expert, because I am in the thick of it, or as she put, “in the forest” (implying that the job search is a dark, wooded area … fair enough).

Writing this three-part series has turned out to be the most useful thing I have done to advance my personal career search, far exceeding the seminars I’ve attended and the hours I’ve wasted aimlessly browsing my university’s job postings online. I learned about job search Web sites that I never knew existed, many through findingDulcinea’s existing career Web guides. I took a personality quiz (to ensure that the Web site’s evaluation tools were reliable, obviously) and found that I might be well-suited to a career in advertising, teaching or consulting. I hit the jackpot when I found a series of videos hosted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers; every tip was a new gem that I have since incorporated into my search tactics.

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m pretty biased when it comes to going overseas. In my opinion, any experience in a foreign culture will make you a more interesting, well-rounded, thoughtful, understanding, independent and expressive person. In my research for the third part of my series, “Work, Intern or Volunteer Abroad,” I learned about dozens of language immersion opportunities in other countries and have since decided to move to Costa Rica for several weeks this summer to learn Spanish.

So thank you, findingDulcinea, for helping me with my own job search. Hopefully the features I wrote will help other recent graduates get on the right track or, at the very least, will inspire them to form a more positive attitude about the process.

Erin Harris
Writer (Ed: and Beloved Intern)

Read the first two articles in Erin's series:

The Post-Graduation Job Search: Find You Fit
The Post-Graduation Job Search: Taking Action

Partnership with El Especial

A month ago, we announced our Spanish-language initiative and began publishing several of our guides in Spanish for our bilingual audience.  This initiative is generating strong, high-quality traffic and positive attention from potential media partners. 
Today, we announce our first syndication partner for this initiative. El Especial, a chain of Spanish-language newspapers, will be highlighting findingDulcinea’s content as a weekly feature in its print editions. We will continue to translate more Web Guides into Spanish and plan to create a mirror Web site that better surfaces this content.

On Internet Privacy, Fend for Yourself

The Washington Post ran a story ten days ago about the FTC's review of behavioral targeting by Internet advertisers.  The Internet privacy issue is much more interesting to privacy advocates and journalists than to the average Internet user.  Most people have little interest in the issue, and those who do care about it protect themselves with cookie deleting or ad-blocking tools that are inexpensive and readily available. The FTC has repeatedly told Congress that it already has all the regulation it needs to protect Internet users, because deceptive practices are already illegal, and almost any egregious intrusion on your privacy can be connected to a deceptive practice.

With my strong understanding of the Internet marketing landscape, I recommend to friends that they familiarize themselves with the information that marketers collect. When it crosses the boundary of their personal comfort zone, take action. Often that's as simple as opting out or adjusting browser tools. Do not rely on the government law or regulation to protect you; the landscape shifts too quickly for that ever to be effective.

For instance, many search engines, by default, track every search query you enter, particularly if you have an account with the search engine and are signed in.  Some people view such a history as a benefit, because they can retrieve old searches and perform them again. To others, it's creepy. And fortunately for those in the latter group, most search engines make it easy to opt out of having their  search history collected.  Likewise, some Internet service providers are working with marketers to track every single Web site you ever visit, and then create a targeting profile.  As long as these ISPs adequately (that being the critical watchword) disclose their practices and enable users to opt out (which they can do by switching ISPs, for starters), there is no need for the government to do anything more, other than ensure there is adequate competition in the marketplace.

How do you familiarize yourself with Internet marketing practices? FindingDulcinea's Web Guide to Internet Marketing and Privacy covers both off-line and online marketing practices as well as how to take steps to opt out of practices you personally are uncomfortable with.

Mark Moran
Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Web Guides in Spanish

FindingDulcinea has translated into Spanish six of its Web Guides: "How to Search the Web," "Health," "U.S. Politics," "Immigration," "Cinco de Mayo" and "Survival Guide to New York City." We plan to add more Spanish-language Web Guides in the future, based on user feedback.

The AOL Latino 2006 Hispanic Cyberstudy revealed that only 15 percent of U.S. Hispanic Internet users read online content in Spanish only, with most users switching back and forth between English and Spanish. Says Juan Tornoe, publisher of HispanicTrending.net, a Latino Marketing & Advertising Blog, "Even Hispanic Internet users who are completely comfortable accessing English-language content may prefer to read explanatory information in Spanish."

Check out the full press release in English or Spanish

NYC & Company

Photo by Vincent Laforet for The New York Times

Last night we attended an event for NYC & Company, the official marketing and tourism partnership for New York. The event was at TheTimesCenter, part of the New York Times Tower. Most of the guests are involved in the NY tourism industry, so a lot of people from hotels, theaters, tour guides, etc.

We are involved in the group primarily because we wrote the ultimate Web Guide to New York City Survival, but also because we are a New York-based company, and it's always good to get involved in the local community and stay informed on what is happening around the city.

Appropriate for Earth Day, the folks from a new Web site called Greenopia.com introduced their concept: a local directory of eco-friendly products and services. The site is in beta, and they've started with listings for New York, Los Angeles, and San Fransisco with more cities to come.

Another person we were excited to meet was from Not for Tourists, the publishers of a series of guides to major cities (of course we link to them in our NYC Survival Guide). If you haven't checked out their Web site recently, I recommend you do. They have some great features, like every single page of their book is available in PDF format, they have a database of recommended business listings, and an Ultimate Web Index for more sites to explore.

Katie Hartsough
Audience Development

Matzoh and Murrain: The True Meaning of Passover

What does Passover mean to me? Passover means a picture of a cow with its legs in the air.

Nearly all Reform Jews have some familiarity with the Maxwell House haggadah , which the Maxwell House (yeah, the coffee company) has been handing out for free since 1934. When I was a child, our family used an edition printed in the early 70s, with a blue cover and an illustrated version of the seder service that bordered on the cartoonish.

During the seder, everyone at the table ritually chants the names of the 10 plagues with which God afflicted the people of Egypt because Pharaoh refused to free the Jews from slavery. The fifth plague is murrain, or cattle disease, and the 1970s edition of the Maxwell House haggadah helpfully indicates this point with a lovely image of a dead cow lying on its back.

As both my grandfathers raced through the seder, reading the Hebrew so quickly that none of the rest of us could follow along, my sister and I would quickly grow bored waiting for dinner to start. We’d leaf ahead in the haggadah, and one or the other of us would land on the page picturing the 10 plagues, nudge the other one and point to the picture of the dead cow. That would start off a chain of giggles and earn us a reprimand from our mother.
Every year, my sister and I would engage in this ritual, and even though we’ve both grown up and moved on to other haggadahs, my mother always makes sure to place a copy of the 1970s Maxwell House haggadah on the table.

The point is, Passover is all about family and friends getting together and creating their own rituals for celebrating the joys of freedom and spiritual renewal. If you’re interested in developing your own Passover traditions (with or without cattle disease), look no further than the findingDulcinea Passover Web Guide. We’ll point you to sites that will teach you the Passover story, explain how to set up your seder plate, help you choose kosher-for-Passover wine, cook a meal that no one will forget and even design your own haggadah, should Maxwell House’s version not prove to be “good to the last drop.”

Amy Goldschlager
Editor