Thomas Edison’s Inventions in the 1900s and Today: From “New” to You!
IntroductionStudents may find it difficult
to study Thomas Edison's inventions because his work seems so far removed from
today's technology. While the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph may be
familiar, other of Edison's inventions, such as the kinetoscope, are so strange
in name and appearance that students might not make the connection between that
machine and today's motion picture industry. Without some understanding of Edison's
time, it is unclear just how significant an impact Edison had on the world, both
then and now. The purpose of this lesson is
to familiarize students with life and technology around 1900 in order to better
understand how Edison influenced both. Through comparing and contrasting life
and technology in the early part of the twentieth century with technology found
in their own homes and experiences, students will gain a greater understanding
of how far the fields of industry and entertainment have progressed since Edison's
day and of how Edison's work was the foundation for technology they enjoy today.
Guiding Questions:How was life in
1900s’ America different from life in America today? How does the technology
we use in our lives today differ from technology in America in the 1900s? What
were Thomas Edison's most significant inventions, and how did his inventions improve
people's lives in the 1900s? How have Thomas Edison's inventions impacted our
lives as well? Learning ObjectivesAfter
completing the lessons in this unit, students will be able to: - Describe
the lifestyles of and the kinds of technology available to both the rich and the
poor in 1900s’ America
- Compare and contrast their own lifestyles
with that of Americans in the 1900s and describe how technology has improved the
quality of their lives
- Identify the modern manifestations of 1900 technology
predictions and make their own reasonable predictions for the future of technology
- Identify Thomas Edison's major inventions and explain how they were used
and how they contributed to the quality of life in the 1900s
- Identify
how Thomas Edison's inventions are a basis for modern technology
Preparing
to Teach this Lesson- Extensive information about Thomas Edison's life,
companies, patents, etc. is available from the EDSITEment-reviewed website Thomas
A. Edison Papers. You may wish to review the page "A
Shorter Chronology of Edison's Life" on the Edison Papers website to familiarize
yourself with Edison's life before introducing the lesson to students.
- Review
each lesson in this unit and select the materials you'd like to use in class.
If you teach in a laptop classroom, decide which resources you will ask students
to view online and which resources you will print out and distribute to students.
You might also decide which activities to complete as a whole group, in small
groups, in pairs, and individually.
- Give students a copy of the Personal
Technology Survey provided in pdf format, and ask them to fill it out at home
and bring it to class the next day for Lesson 1. Emphasize that students should
try to find as many examples of technology in their homes as possible.
Suggested
Activities 1. Understanding
and Identifying Technology Today 2.
Technology in 1900 3. Thomas
Edison's Life and Inventions 4.
Edison in Your Home 1. Understanding
and Identifying Technology Today Part
One
Write the word "technology" on the board or on a flip chart and
ask students how they would define technology. After the group has had a chance
to brainstorm definitions of their own, ask several students to look up the definition
in print or online dictionaries, such as WWWebster.com,
accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed website Internet
Public Library—Youth Division. Discuss the various aspects of the definition,
and form one definition on the board for the class to learn and use. Make sure
the students understand that technology is the product of scientific research,
and that usually those products serve industry, like machines, or people, like
computers, stereos and televisions. Technology can also be categorized as products
that help people and products that entertain people. It might also help to explain
to students that technology is products that use electricity.
Part Two
Ask students to have their Personal
Technology Survey in front of them, and ask for volunteers to share the examples
of technology found in their homes; put their responses on the board or on a flip
chart. As more students read their lists, place checkmarks next to items already
named. Ask the group to identify the most common forms of technology in their
homes by looking at the number of checkmarks next to each item. Next, ask the
students to consider the role each piece of technology plays in their lives. Give
each student a copy of the Helpful
and Entertaining Technology Chart provided in pdf format, and ask them to
categorize up to ten examples of technology in their homes as helpful technology
or entertaining technology. You might ask students to complete this exercise in
pairs or small groups. Following this exercise,
have the students write a short response to the following question, either alone
or in small groups: How does technology affect your life—for instance, in
what ways does it make your life easier, more difficult, more fun, more complex,
more challenging? 2.
Technology in 1900 Segue into the second
lesson by explaining that the students are going to learn about what life and
technology were like over one hundred years ago in America. You might begin by
asking students to brainstorm, in small groups or as a whole group, what they
think life and technology were like in the early 1900s. Write student responses
on the board or on a flip chart. This activity would also be fun in small groups!
**If you teach in a laptop school, students can complete the next
part of the lesson online using An
Interview with Max Morath, from the website The
American Experience—WayBack U.S. History for Kids - Technology in 1900,
accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Internet Public Library-Youth Division. If
not, you can download, print, and hand out copies of the paraphrased
interview, provided in pdf format. If using the website, tell the students
to omit questions 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13. After
the students have had time to read through the interview, you might want to discuss
the interview with them. You could also compare the facts of the interview with
the students' predictions about what technology was like in the 1900s. Finally,
have students write a short essay comparing and contrasting life in early 1900s’
America with their lives in America today. You might have them choose three or
four of the questions from the interview and answer those questions from their
own point of view. **Example: In
1900, most kids were dying to get their hands on a phonograph. The quality and
the variety of the music the phonograph could play were not very good, though.
Today, most kids want to play their music on a CD player, which has better sound.
Today there are also more types of music to choose from—like country, pop,
and classical. Most children today probably wouldn't choose to listen to opera,
as some children did in the 1900s. Others might want an MP3 player to play music.
An MP3 player doesn't use discs at all. 3.
Thomas Edison's Life and Inventions Segue
into this lesson by explaining to students that the man responsible for most of
the inventions talked about in the Max Morath interview is Thomas Alva Edison,
and that they are going to learn about his life and his inventions. An
accessible biography of Edison's life is available at "The
Life of Thomas Edison" on Inventors
at About.com, accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Internet Public Library—Youth Division. Students
should read through the selection and answer the following questions for comprehension:
- When was Edison born?
- Describe
what Edison's education was like. Do you think this sort of education was common
in the late 1800s? How does Edison's education contrast with your education?
- At
what age did Edison begin working? At what age did he strike out on his own? Why
do you think so many boys left home at young ages to work in Edison's time?
- How
did Edison spend his free time?
- What opportunities did Edison have as
a telegraph operator?
- What was Edison's first successful invention?
- What
two important events happened for Edison in 1871?
- What was Menlo Park?
- Edison's second major invention was the tin foil phonograph. What did
it do?
- What contributions did Edison make to the electric lighting industry?
After
students have completed the reading assignment, review the three inventions introduced
in the article—the stock ticker, the tin foil phonograph and the incandescent
light—and ask students to categorize them as technology that helps people
or technology that entertains people by writing each invention's name in a space
under "Product" on their charts from lesson 1. Next,
look at a second page devoted to Thomas Edison's inventions at "The
Inventions of Thomas Edison" on Inventors
at About.com, accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed website The
Internet Public Library—Youth Division. The material on these pages can
be somewhat dense, so you may want to download, print, and hand out to students
the condensed, paraphrased version, "A
Survey of Thomas Edison's Inventions" with the name of the inventions followed
by a short description of their workings. You
might also break students into groups and assign each group a specific invention
to read about and report on. After students have read and discussed each invention
briefly, ask them to categorize each invention as technology that helps people
or as technology that entertains people, using their charts. 4.
Edison in Your Home **Before
completing this lesson in class, have students take their personal technology
surveys home again, and this time have them make a list of all the items in their
homes that are modern versions of Edison inventions, such as lights, CD players,
DVD players, camcorders, etc. Ask the class for examples of modern
versions of Edison's inventions in their homes. Write student responses on the
board or on a flip chart. Individually, ask students to write a short response
to the following questions: - How do you think Thomas Edison improved the
quality of people's lives in the 1900s through technology?
- How have Thomas
Edison's inventions improved the quality of your life today?
Share
responses as a group to review the lesson. Individually
or in small groups, have students draw or use images from the internet and magazines
to create colorful pictorial timelines of the evolution of Edison's inventions.
Pictures of Edison's inventions can be found on all the pages referenced in this
lesson. **Example: Edison cylinder
phonograph » Edison
disc phonograph »
record player »
CD player. Extending the Lesson- Have
students look at the predictions made about technology in the year 2000 by people
in 1900 on "What
in the world will the future bring?" on the website The
American Experience—Wayback U.S. History for Kids—Technology in 1900
accessed through the EDSITEment reviewed website The
Internet Public Library-Youth Division. How many of their predictions came
true, more or less, and what are the present-day manifestations of those predictions?
Ask students to make predictions about what technology will be like in another
one hundred years, in the year 2100. You might have the students make pictorial
charts or collages in which they include picture of technology in 1900, today,
and drawings of their predictions for the future.
- Students might also
enjoy looking at other popular inventions of the 1900s—such as blue jeans
and Coca-Cola. Online, or using handouts, have students review Inventors
and Inventions 1851-1900 and 1901-1950
on the website EnchantedLearning.com,
accessed through the EDSITEment reviewed website The
Internet Public Library-Youth Division. Ask students to make a list of all
the inventions created in the period from 1851-1950 that we use almost every day.
- Create a visual matching quiz by downloading and copying pictures of
Edison's inventions into one column with names and descriptions of the inventions
in the second column. This assignment would work best as an online quiz, as the
quality of the pictures when printed and copied may be too poor for students to
distinguish between them.
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