Industrial Revolution Internet Scavenger Hunt

 

Go to the web sites indicated below to answer questions on the ways transportation, communication, agriculture, and the lives of women and children were changed by inventions of the Industrial Revolution.  Answer the questions on your own paper – in complete sentences.  Be sure to scroll down and read everything on the web site that is related to the question and click the back arrow to return to these instructions.  Be sure to use your critical thinking skills!

 

Transportation

 

 

Click Technological Changes in Transportation video to answer the following questions:

 

 

1. What effect did the invention of the steamboat have on settlement patterns along rivers far upstream from the coastline?

 

2. How did the invention of the steamboat affect manufacturing?

 

 

Click Erie Canal video to answer the following questions:

 

 

3. What lake gained access to the port of New York City after the Erie Canal was built?

 

4. What effect do you think this had on settlement patterns in the mid 1800s?  (Look at a map of the United States, if necessary.)

 

 

Click Steamboat Bill sheet music and select numbers 3-5 above the picture to answer the following question:

 

 

5. After reading the lyrics to the song “Steamboat Bill,” what can you tell about the attitudes of people you might meet traveling up and down the Mississippi River on a steamboat?

 

 

Communication

 

 

Click Morse code to answer the following questions:

 

 

6. What effect do you think the invention of the Morse code and the telegraph had on communication in the mid 1800s?

 

7. Write your name in Morse code.

 

 

Agriculture

 

 

Click John Deere to answer the following questions:

 

 

8. What did John Deere invent?

 

9. Why was it better than earlier versions?

 

10. What impact did John Deere’s invention have on agriculture?

 

11. Name five products still made by John Deere & Company.

 

 

Click Cyrus McCormick to answer the following questions:

 

 

12. What did Cyrus McCormick invent?

 

13. Why was it better than earlier versions?

 

14. What impact did Cyrus McCormick’s invention have on agriculture?

 

 

Click Eli Whitney to answer the following questions:

 

 

15. What agricultural machine did Eli Whitney invent?

 

16. How did it improve the way things had been done previously?

 

17. What impact did Eli Whitney’s invention have on agriculture?

 

18. What effect did it have on slavery?

 

 

Women and Children

 

 

 

Click Lowell Mill Girls to answer the following questions:

 

 

19. Read “Factory Rules” and decide whether you think you could keep up with mill girls.  Why or why not?

 

 

Click Child Labor for information for the following writing assignment:

 

 

20. Click on various topics in the first section titled “Life in the Factory” and write a Moccasin Journal (or a letter to your pen-pal) about what it would be like to work in a textile factory as a child during the Industrial Revolution.  Include plenty of details.