MOSI Google Hangout

Recently my history class held a video chat with some of the workers from the Museum of Science and Industry in England to learn about the factories there during the Industrial Revolution. But before we could call the other side of the world we had to prepare back in America. The first thing we did was read the textiles page on the MOSI website and some of their linked documents on the side. Next, we watched a video of Jamie, the guy we would be talking to, explaining some things around the museum. We wrote down the names of important machines and other things that we didn't know and then looked them up so when we talked to him later we would be able to know what he was talking about. The final thing we did to prepare for the chat was create questions for Jamie to answer about the textile process, the evolution of machinery, impact of industrialization on people, and being a real life historian.

On the day of the call we went to class in the morning since England is 5 hours ahead of us and we got a chance to ask him our questions. Someone asked how long the entire textile making process would take. It's hard to know though because no factory did the whole thing, some even only did one part.

Google video chat was on the smart board for everyone to see

 We started by looking at the older machines and how families worked together to make their own clothes. This changed with the invention of the water frame. The water frame did the job a mother used to do but faster, better, and more efficiently. It would spin and twist four threads at a time and was powered by water. Jamie also taught us about the workers who used these machines. There were a lot of them going at once and each had a ton of moving parts so it was very loud, dangerous, and stuffy inside the factories. The work was not sanitary, women would put their mouths on wooden shuttles to suck the thread through giving each other whatever diseases they had while also inhaling machine oils and cotton fibers.

There were no windows in mills because these would misfire and could shatter windows
(lethal to be hit with since they were big and fast but workers were cheaper to replace than glass) 

 Often times the women would bring the wood up to their face too fast and knocked their teeth out with them. However, the most dangerous job was probably cleaning under the machines as they pulled out and slammed back in seconds.

Boy cleaning under machine 

 This was so dangerous that orphans were used so that nobody who worked there would be sad about losing someone from their family. If they weren't fast enough they would be cut in half by the machine.

I really liked this activity. It was a lot more exciting and interesting to have someone who works in a museum showing us the stuff and explaining at the same time. It was nice to see someone in the real world who had to know the things we've been talking about in school since we're always so confined to our classroom. I also felt like the aspects of mill work that we talked about went more in depth and the actual machines helped show what it would've actually been like. I liked how we learned about everything first so it made sense to us and then we got to ask questions on what we wanted to know more about. I would like to do something like this again for another topic if we could.