Description
"The Valley of the Shadow" is an innovative web-based, role-playing simulation on the Civil War as experienced through the lives of Shenandoah Valley residents. The objective was to have students experience six years of history over ten weeks of class time by involving students in a virtual world, with a detailed cast of characters and storylines adapted from actual events, newspapers, and diaries of the Civil War. University of Virginia Dean and historian Edward Ayers granted permission to base the simulation around his award-winning digital archive "The Valley of the Shadow (http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/), a historical website created at the University of Virginia that contains thousands of original photographs, diaries, letters, and newspaper articles from people who lived in two neighboring communities in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War. By creating characters based on the real people and their letters and diaries in the "Valley" archive, "Living in the Valley of the Shadow" generates internal motivation for students to carefully examine primary documents, experience and articulate the complex motivations and arguments used to support and oppose the Civil War, confront nineteenth century attitudes towards African Americans and the institution of slavery, grapple with the war's violence and devastation, and understand the contingent, ground-level reality experienced by local residents.
