What Inspires Me? #16 Ken Burns UNUM
Ken Burns has been making documentary films for about 40 years. These include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), The Vietnam War (2017), and Country Music (2019). His newest film Benjamin Franklin is showing on PBS now.
Ken Burns documentaries are informative, well-researched, interesting—and as I did with Country Music—binge worthy. That’s no secret. But this might be. It was to me: UNUM!
UNUM is a new (to-me-at-least) feature on his website is all about connectivity.
Connecting historical dots.
Connecting events.
Especially connecting with viewers!
In more than 40 years of delving through history, Ken Burns team has noticed connectivity. that while note-worthy events in one part of the world occurred, in other parts equally noteworthy events were happening—historical, physical and cultural. There are obvious and no so obvious connections.
UNUM explores this through snippets of films organized into groups of historical or cultural significance as well as by time periods.
And what’s really cool—especially for research purposes, users can initiate their own searches on UNUM. Whatever clipping pop up as a result of that key word search will play a bit before the “key word” appears in the clipping and a bit longer so views will see for themselves how it fits in the grander scheme of things.
Teachers: What better way to connect students to historical events than with visual-oral-actual clipping! Civil Rights, Black History, Government, Prohibition, Vietnam, the Dust Bowl—you teaching it; UNUM for Educators!
UNUM is a proud partner of PBS LearningMedia, which provides educators with free standards-aligned videos, interactives, lesson plans, and other instructional resources for the classroom.
Writers of Fiction and Non-Fiction: UNUM for Educators provides the color commentary, visual and oral playlist for America-centric historical fiction and non-fiction—and not dry clippings on microfiche! You writing it—UNUM has it. If not, send word to Ken Burns—a documentary about that subject is either already in the works—or it will be!
But, don’t take my word for it, check out UNUM for yourself.
Be warned, once you delve into UNUM, you might find yourself down a rabbit hole you will not want to escape:
