American immigration: The best interactive map

I recently found this map while reading this post by Meg Miller.  She described an amazing interactive map created by the University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab.

As you drag the slider at the bottom of the map, advancing from 1850 to 2000, the map shows you the country of origin, number, and destination for the millions of immigrants who came to America.  As amazing and cool as that looks, you can also click on any American city, and a chart on the right will tell you the country of origin and number of immigrants living in that city.  For example, dragging the slider to 1910 and clicking on Humboldt, Nevada, shows that the greatest number of foreign born residents came from Spain (197), followed by Germany (186), Italy (171) and Ireland (112).

Classroom connection: Use a jigsaw activity.  Divide the class into two groups.  Group A focuses immigration before World War I, and Group B focuses on post-World War I immigration.  Have each group look for patterns (number of immigrants, where they originate, where they settle) in the nations they are investigating.