Use Case: Educators

Ask students to create digital essays or annotated bibliographies in their own websites, ask students to build exhibits with an archive of primary sources, or build learning modules with your team.

Read review of using Omeka in the classroom from the National History Education Clearinghouse.

Student-built Sites

Ask students to sign up for an account and build their own digital projects. See Use Case: Students.

Steps for creating your site:

Sign up for a free account. Choose a domain name that reflects the topic of your unit or lessons.
Invite teachers (or students) to collaborate and help manage the website by becoming administrative users.
Choose and configure a design theme. Add a header image and think about ways to customize the navigation.
Install plugins that you will be using for this site, such as Simple Pages and the Exhibit Builder.
Plan which sources and files you want to include in the site for the module or archive of primary sources. Gather any bibliographic or descriptive data together for uploading.
Upload sources and files to build the website’s “archive.”
Upload lesson plans, by choosing “lesson plan” from the item type drop down menu when adding an item. Customize the fields to fit your lesson plan’s format. You can also upload a PDF of the lesson plan.
Tag items as you add them if you want to make connections between different sources or organize items by themes. Once added, tags may be edited or deleted.
Build a module using your sources and lesson plans using the Exhibit Builder. Each exhibit page can correlate to parts of a teaching module: Introduction, Inquiry Question, Primary Source gallery, Lesson plans, Resources, et al.
Ask students to create exhibits using the site’s archive of primary sources. Create Simple Pages for an introduction to the topic and pose inquiry questions. Point students to the “archive” for primary sources. Ask them to build an exhibit with sources. (See more on user permission levels).