Heritage Minute Contest

You know, it’s too bad that you have to be sceptical of things on the internet.  I was watching television Saturday night when I was notified of a new message from a Canadian Prime Minister.  I raised an eyebrow.  After all, Sir John A. MacDonald died in 1891.  I just got a message from his Twitter account.

@dougpete Can you pls help share the Make Your Own #HeritageMinute Student Contest + free #CDNHistory learning tools: http://t.co/hEagX2niDt

— Stories of Sir JohnA (@StoriesofJohnA) April 11, 2015

I’m interested but need to do a bit more work to convince myself this is a legitimate request.

Actually, doing a bit of digging, the account is “Stories of Sir John A.” and it’s powered by the folks at Historica Canada.  These are the folks behind the wonderful Canadian Historical Minutes that we see on television.

With registration at the Historica Canada website, you can access them, and more, online.

So, back to the request, I felt reasonably safe going forward to check out the recommendation.

The site is, in fact, an announcement for Canadian students to create their own Heritage Minute.

What a great opportunity for budding historians, young movie makers, or Canadians just wishing to have a voice recounting a moment in Canadian history from their perspective!

You’re not left on your own; there are both student and teacher resources for this project and would nicely compliment any Canadian History classroom.  Immersion tools are available as well.

Back to the original request – I certainly passed it along via a retweet and there were some positive responses from educators almost immediately.  We all know that Twitter messages can be fleeting and just there for the moment, so I decided to write this post to give the message a bit more longevity.

Please pass the information along to colleagues.  This sounds like an exciting event to be part of and, in our very connected global world, it’s specially nice to see something uniquely Canadian.