Two Worlds Collide and a Colony is Lost

It is hard to imagine any two people more unlike than the Indigenous peoples inhabiting the Americas and the European explorers, soldiers, adventurers and others who first made contact. Each was steeped in many thousands of years of their own history and customs. Misunderstandings would arise that often lead to tragedy. Yet common ground could be found and friendships, alliances and later amalgamation were the result. This new online textbook offers a unique way to learn more about the tentative beginnings of our country.

Two worlds: Prehistory, contact, and the Lost Colony

A “digital textbook”Part one of LEARN NC’s digital textbook for North Carolina History explores the natural and human history of the state from the dawn of geologic time to approximately 1600 CE.

With the arrival of European explorers in the 1500s, two worlds collided in North Carolina. Peoples that had lived here for thousands of years — in a land that had existed for millions — were changed forever, and the stage was set for a new era that would link the peoples and cultures of Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Designed for secondary students, this first module of our web-based “digital textbook” combines primary sources with articles from a variety of perspectives, maps, photographs, and multimedia to tell the many stories of early North Carolina:

LEARN NC’s “digital textbook” for North Carolina history provides a new model for teaching and learning. It makes primary sources central to the learning experience, using them to tell the stories of the past rather than merely illustrating it. Special web-based tools help you learn to read those sources and ask good questions of them. And because it’s on the web, this textbook relies on multimedia whenever possible to supplement or even replace text.
The sections that follow will tell you what to expect from this textbook and how to get the most out of it.

Start Learning NC Now:

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-twoworlds

What is a Digital Textbook?

Click here for a .pdf document explaining this concept.