THE NEW IMMIGRANTS: NYC 1880-1924 by Vanguard Direct and the New York Department of Education invites users to explore the immigrant experience in America.
This outstanding history app is divided into six sections: a new beginning, the migration process, tenement life, earning a living, nativism, and assimilation and cultural preservation.
Users begin by scrolling down to the first topic, a new beginning. Or, they can click on one of the six sections. Each section provides an overview along with a sidebar containing three areas to explore. The sidebar options reveal a primary source document and an explanation. Users can then swipe through additional examples, choose the information icon for related materials, reveal questions and prompts geared at particular grade levels, save materials to a collection, or use the crop tool to zoom and crop an area of the screen.
Navigation is very intuitive making the app easy to explore and use. The images and other elements are high-quality. Students can create a collection of their materials, print or email PDFs from their collections, and use the search tool to explore related documents.
Teaching materials are provided for elementary, middle school, and high school levels. They include document based performance tasks along with instructional strategies and activities.
Social studies teachers and librarians will enjoy the focus on the carefully curated primary source collection of over 100 artifacts woven into the app including documents, newspaper articles, cartoons, photos, audio, video, and more. The New Immigrants app deals with a broad spectrum of topics from the journey and hardships to the triumphs of the immigrant experience. As such, it should work well in a classroom situation where it’s important to explore multiple perspectives and experiences.
Librarians will find this to be an excellent addition to the school’s history app collection. There’s a need for an app like this on every topic in American history!
To download the app, go to iTunes.
