Seven short activities you can run this week. Each one says what students do, which tools it uses, about how long it takes, and what to watch for. Everything here is free and needs no account. Try an activity yourself before class: it takes a few minutes, and you will see what your students will see.
What students do: Students read three to five documents you chose, answer five sourcing questions under each one in their own words, then compare their answers with the archive’s record. Close with a short discussion: which document would you trust most, and for what?
Tools: A document set, made with “Primary sources only” and “Students analyse each document” ticked. Each document carries its citation in the style you choose: MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, ABNT or ISO 690. Print the set, or share the student link.
About how long: About 15 minutes in class, and about 15 minutes to make the set beforehand.
What students do: Before class, ask a general chatbot for a bibliography on your unit. In pairs, students paste it into the bibliography checker, sort the entries into found, close match and not found, and write down what differs for each close match. Then the class decides what they would do next about each entry that was not found.
Tools: The bibliography checker. It looks each entry up in Crossref, OpenAlex, Open Library and the Library of Congress, and shows the record it found, with its link.
About how long: About 20 minutes.
What students do: Students search the question and keep one source made at the time. They press “Find a source that disagrees” and keep one that challenges it. On their shelf they open “Compare two sources” and answer three questions: where the sources agree, where they differ and why, and which they would trust more for the question.
Tools: The research search, Keep, “Find a source that disagrees”, the shelf, and “Compare two sources”.
About how long: About 30 minutes.
What students do: Give the class a question with a date range. Students choose Primary only, keep four to six sources made at the time, then open their shelf and look at the timeline. Where are the gaps? Whose voices are missing? Each student runs one more search to fill a gap. To go further, they switch the search to Books for one book on the period; Books near me points to a library copy through WorldCat.
Tools: The research search with Primary only, Keep, the timeline on the shelf, and Books.
About how long: About 40 minutes.
What students do: Switch the search to Videos. Students choose one newsreel or recording marked made at the time, watch a short stretch of it, and answer five sourcing questions on paper: who made it, for whom, why, from what point of view, and what it cannot show. Then they compare it with a written source on the same event.
Tools: Videos: archive film from the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the Internet Archive. The research search for the written source.
About how long: About 25 minutes.
What students do: Send the class one link to a topic. Each student picks one source, opens “Analyse this source” on its page, and answers the five questions in their own words. Then they press “Compare with the record” and write down one place where their answer and the record differ, and why.
Tools: A class link, with a QR code to project, and “Analyse this source”.
About how long: About 10 minutes. It works as a weekly starter.
What students do: Students pick a quotation shown on a source, open the archive’s own page, and find those exact words there. On a long source they use “Where to look” to find the places that use a word they care about, then read around it.
Tools: The exact text from the archive record on each source, the link to the record, and “Where to look” on the source page.
About how long: About 15 minutes.
No. Students open the page and search: no name, no email address, no roster. Sign-in is optional, uses an emailed link rather than a Google or school account, and does one thing: it keeps a student’s shelf across devices.
The sources a student keeps, their notes and their answers stay in their own browser. What they type into the search box is sent to Historia’s server, an AI provider and the archives, and is kept in our search logs and a cache. Tell students not to type anything private. The privacy page lists everything.
There is nothing to install; it runs in a web browser. Because the shelf lives in the browser, a computer that clears itself at sign-out clears the shelf too. Students can save a research file from the shelf and open it later, or sign in. Document sets and comparisons have a Print button, for a class short of devices.
During the demo round each browser has 40 new searches, and at most 40 an hour. A question someone has already asked opens again from the cache and does not use one up: when a whole class opens the same class link, the first search fetches the results and the rest open from the cache. If many people on one network search at once, new searches pause for a few minutes. Video searches are limited to 40 an hour per browser, and the bibliography checker to 20 lists an hour. If your class needs more, write to us.
No. Answers to “Analyse this source” and “Compare two sources” are saved only in the student’s browser and are never sent to Historia. Students share them the way they share any work: aloud, on paper, or in the annotated bibliography they export from their shelf.
MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, ABNT and ISO 690, built from the archive’s record, and Bluebook for a court case when the archive gives its reporter citation. Check them against the guide your school uses.