Presidential Timeline Receives Congressional Funding - October, 21, 2008

A 1945 letter from Henry Stimson to President Truman about the atomic bomb, just one of many digitized documents on the Timeline.

The Learning Technology Center's Presidential Timeline has been provided special Congressional funding through the Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Education—Programs of National Significance, through the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. The Learning Technology Center will receive $557,311 of the $718,230 awarded to the LBJ Foundation, a major collaborative partner of the LTC on the Timeline project.

The Presidential Timeline, which debuted last year and was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the UT General Libraries, and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, is a Web site based on 20th century presidents, Hoover through Clinton. It contains digitized resources from the National Archive’s twelve presidential libraries, such as audio and video clips, photos, and documents. These primary sources, largely unavailable before to the general public, provide unique insight into important events in history and how the presidents reacted to and handled these events. It also contains curricular materials that help teachers use the Timeline and its resources in their lessons. The LTC’s External and Special Projects Coordinator Ken Tothero manages the Presidential Timeline project.

The new funding will extend the project through 2012 and provide for many more of the presidential libraries’ primary sources to be digitized and added to the Timeline. New functionalities will also be added. One planned feature will allow users to create timelines of their own lives and add photos and other personal items to it. In addition, an online clearinghouse will be created, where teachers can share their own Timeline instructional activities and student projects.

The LTC will also host four annual summer institutes for social studies teachers on the use of the Presidential Timeline and primary sources in their teaching. A series of Webinars on related topics is also planned. To handle these new project goals, the LTC has hired an additional computer programmer and a social studies/primary source specialist to augment the Timeline team.

For more information about the Presidential Timeline, contact Ken Tothero.

—Laurie Caldwell, LTC Communications Coordinator