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Library of Congress

An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Includes primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map sets, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion images. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, comprises the majority of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well. The Library of Congress also offers a Learning Page that provides tools, activities, thoughts, and features for educators and students.
The Library of Congress American Memory in particular is a superb resource for American history and general research. Contained are multimedia collections of photos, recorded sound, moving images, and digitized text. Utilize the Teachers department to explore primary set collections and themed tools. Teachers can get updates on new tools, professional development opportunities, and Library programs, events and providers.
The Library of Congress: Teachers
The new Library of Congress Teachers page provides tools and resources for using Library of Congress primary source documents from the classroom and contain excellent lesson plans, document analysis tools, online and offline activities, timelines, presentations and professional development resources.
Center for History and New Media: History Matters
A production of this American Social History Project/Center of Media and Learning, City of University New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, History Matters is a wonderful online resource for history teachers and students. One of the numerous digital tools are lesson plans, syllabi, links, and displays. The middle for History and New Media’s tools include a listing of”best” web sites, links to syllabi and lesson plans, essays on history and new media, a link for their excellent History Topics web site for U.S. History, and much more. The CHNM History News Network is a weekly online magazine that features articles by various historians. Resources are intended to benefit specialist historians, higher school instructors, and students of history.
Teaching American History
This is a fantastic assortment of thoughtful and thorough lesson plans and other resources on teaching history. Each project Was Made by teachers in Virginia at a Center for History and New Media workshop. All projects include many different lesson plans and tools, and a few even offer educational videos on supply analysis. The lesson plans cover a range of topics in American history and use engaging and interesting resources, activities, discussion questions, and assessments. Take your time surfing –there are many to select from.
National Archives and Records Administration
The NARA offers federal archives, displays, classroom resources, census records, Hot Topics, and much more. Besides its paper holdings (which will show the Earth 57 times) it’s over 3.5 billion digital records. Users can research individuals, locations, events and other popular topics of interest, as well as ancestry and military documents. There are also features displays drawing from many of those NARA’s popular sources. One of the most asked holdings are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, WWII photos, along with the Bill of Rights.
The National Archives: Teachers’ Resources
The National Archives Lesson Plans section comprises incorporates U.S. primary files and its excellent teaching tasks correlate to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government. Lessons are organized by chronological era, from 1754 to the present.
Digital Vaults
The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of history that assesses thousands of documents, photographs, and pieces of history which have been incorporated in a digital format. Upon entering the homepage, the consumer is given eight random archives to select from. Clicking on one provides a description along with a brief history of the archive, as well as exhibits a huge assortment of archives that are similar. The user has the ability to shuffle, rearrange, gather, and explore archives, in addition to search for certain points in history utilizing a key word search. Even though a lack of initial organization or indicator might appear overwhelming, Digital Vaults is a superbly imaginative resource for investigating history in a compiled way.
Teach Documents With DocsTeach, educators can create interactive history activities that incorporate over 3,000 primary-source materials in a variety of media in the National Archives. Tools on the site are made to teach critical thinking abilities and incorporate interactive elements such as puzzles, maps, and graphs.
Our Records Offers 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings, which chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965. Attributes a teacher’s toolbox and contests for teachers and students.
PBS Online
A great resource for information on a plethora of historical events and personalities. PBS’s various and diverse web displays supplement their television series and generally include a list of each incident, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, primary sources, a glossary, photos, maps, and links to relevant sites. PBS productions comprise American Experience, Frontline and People’s Century. Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities — arranged by subject.
PBS Teacher Resource Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities — arranged by topic and grade level — and then sign up for their newsletter. Categories include American History, World History, History on Television, and Biographies. Many lessons incorporate primary sources. Some lessons require watching PBS video, but many don’t.
Smithsonian Education
The Smithsonian Education website is divided simply into three main classes: Educators, Families, and Students. The Educators section is key word searchable and includes lesson programs — many pertaining to background. The Students section comes with an interactive”Secrets of the Smithsonian” that educates about the special collections at the Smithsonian.
The Cost of Freedom: Americans at War
This Smithsonian website logically incorporates Flash video and text to examine armed conflicts between the U.S. in the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Each conflict contains a brief video clip, statistical information, and a set of artifacts. There’s also a Civil War mystery, an exhibition self-guide, and a teacher’s guide. The New American Roles (1899-present) segment contains an introductory movie and short essay on the conflict in addition to historic images and artifacts.
Edsitement — The Best of the Humanities on the Internet EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. All sites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. This impressive website features reviewed links to top websites, professionally developed lesson plans, classroom activities, materials to assist with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You can search lesson plans from subcategory and grade level; center school lessons are the most numerous.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There’s a lot of quality stuff for art students, educators, and enthusiasts at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site. Start with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History, a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world. Each timeline page incorporates representative art from the Museum’s collection, a chart of time periods, a map of the region, a summary, and a listing of important events. The timelines — accompanied by regional, world, and sub-regional maps — provide a linear outline of art history, and allow visitors to compare and contrast art from around the world at any moment in history. There’s plenty more here apart from the Timeline:”Just for Fun” has interactive activities for children,”A Closer Look” assesses the”hows and whys” behind Met objects (such as George Washington Crossing the Delaware),”Artist” enables visitors to access biographical materials on a choice of artists as well as general details about their job, and”Topics and Cultures” presents past and present cultures with special attributes on the Met’s collections and exhibitions.
C-SPAN in the Classroom
Access C-SPAN’s complete program archives including all videos. C-SPAN from the Classroom is a free membership service which offers information and tools to assist teachers in their use of source, public affairs video from C-SPAN television. You don’t need to be a member to utilize C-SPAN online tools in your classroom, but also membership includes access to teaching ideas, activities and classroom applications.
Digital History
This impressive website from Steven Mintz at the University of Houston includes an up-to-date U.S. history textbook; annotated primary sources on United States, Mexican American, and Native American history, and slavery; and succinct essays on the history of ethnicity and immigration, movie, private life, and science and engineering. Visual histories of Lincoln’s America and America’s Reconstruction contain text from Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney. The Doing Background feature lets users rebuild the past through the voices of kids, gravestones, advertising, and other primary sources. Reference resources include classroom handouts, chronologies, encyclopedia articles, glossaries, and an audio-visual archive including speeches, book talks and e-lectures by historians, and historic maps, songs, newspaper articles, and images. The site’s Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.
Civil Rights Special Collection
The Teachers’ Domain Civil Rights Collection is produced by WGBH Boston, in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Washington University in St. Louis. Materials are free but you must sign up. Features an impressive selection of audio, video, and text sources from Frontline and American Experience reveals, Eyes on the Prize, along with other sources. Also offers an interactive Civil Rights movement deadline and four lesson plans: Campaigns for Economic Freedom/Re-Examining Brown/Taking a Stand/Understanding White Supremacy.
Science and Technology of World War II
Some of the most remarkable technology advancements of the modern age happened during World War II along with the National World War II Memorial has 8000 objects directly related to science and technology. This impressive exhibit contains an animated timeline, activities (such as sending encoded messages), professional sound responses to science and engineering questions, lesson plans, a quiz, essays, and more. An impressive demonstration.
Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008
Voting America assesses long-term patterns in presidential election politics in the United States from the 1840s to now as well as some patterns in recent congressional election politics. The project offers a vast spectrum of animated and interactive visualizations of the way Americans voted in elections within the last 168 decades. The visualizations can be used to explore individual elections past the state level down to different counties, which allows for more sophisticated analysis. The interactive maps highlight exactly how important third parties have played in American political history. You could even find expert analysis and commentary videos which share a few of the most interesting and important trends in American political history.
Do History: Martha Ballard
DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of regular people previously. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the study that went to the book and PBS film A Midwife’s Tale, which were both based upon the remarkable 200 year old diary of midwife/healer Martha Ballard. There are hundreds and hundreds of downloadable pages from original documents: diaries, letters, maps, court records, town records, and more and a searchable copy of this twenty-seven year diary of Martha Ballard. DoHistory engages users interactively with historic documents and artifacts from the past and introduces people to the pivotal questions and issues raised when”doing” history. DoHistory was designed and preserved by the Film Study Center at Harvard University and is hosted and maintained by the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.
The Valley of the Dead The Valley of the Shadow depicts two communities, one Northern and one Southern, through the experience of the American Civil War. The project targets Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and it poses a hypermedia archive of thousands of sources that makes a social history of the coming, combating, and aftermath of the Civil War. These sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, photos, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records. Students can explore the conflict and write their own foundations or rebuild the life stories of girls, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families. The project is meant for secondary schools, community schools, libraries, and universities.
Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts has launched a rich and impressive website which concentrates on the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, with the goal of commemorating and reinterpreting the event from the viewpoints of all of the cultural groups who were current — Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, French, and English. The website brings together many resources — historical scenes, tales of people’s lives, historical artifacts and papers, essays, voices and tunes, historical maps, along with a deadline — to illuminate broad and competing perspectives with this spectacular event.
Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition
The Missouri Historical Society has developed a comprehensive award-winning website and on-line program designed to complement their Lewis and Clark, The National Bicentinnal Exhibiton. Written for grades 4-12, the units concentrate on nine important themes of the display and feature tens of thousands of primary sources from the exhibit. The program uses the Lewis and Clark expedition as the case studies for larger themes like Diplomacy, Mapping, Animals, Language, and Trade and Property. It presents both the Euro-American standpoint and a distinct Native American standpoint. The online exhibit has two segments. One is a thematic approach that highlights the content from the main galleries of this display. The other is a map-based travel that follows the expedition and presents primary sources along the way, including interviews with present-day Native Americans.
The Sport of Life and Death
The Sport of Life and Death was voted Best Overall Site for 2002 by the Web and has won a ton of other web awards. The website is based on a traveling exhibition currently showing at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey and bills itself as”an online travel to the ancient spectacle of gods and athletes.” The Sport of Life and Death features dazzling special effects courtesy of Macromedia Flash technology and its overall layout and organization are superb. You will find helpful interactive maps, timelines, and samples of artwork in the Explore the Mesoamerican World section. The focus of the website, however, is the Mesoamerican ballgame, the oldest organized sport ever. The sport is explained through a gorgeous and engaging combination of text, images, expert commentary, and movie. Visitors can also compete in a competition!
The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory
A first-rate exhibition created by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University. There are two major parts: the background of Chicago from the 19th century, and also how the Chicago Fire has been recalled over time. Included are essays, galleries, and even sources.
Technology at the U.S. History in the Classroom
Here are some innovative, engaging and technology-infused classes & internet sites on U.S. History:
“Day in Life of Hobo” podcast
This interdisciplinary creative writing/historical simulation activity incorporates blogging and podcasting and requires students to find out more about the plight of displaced teenagers through the Great Depression and then create their own fictionalized account of a day in the life of a Hobo. This undertaking will be included in the spring edition of Social Education, published by the National Council of Social Studies.
“Telling Their Stories” — Oral History Archive Project of the Urban School
Visit”Telling Their Stories” and read, watch, and listen to perhaps the best student-created oral history project at the country. High School students at the Urban School of San Francisco have produced three impressive oral history interviews featured at this website: Holocaust Survivors and Refugees, World War II Camp Liberators, and Japanese-American Internees. Urban school students conducted, filmed, and transcribed interviews, created countless movie files associated with every transcript, and then posted the full-text, full-video interviews on the public site. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has acknowledged Urban School’s Telling Their Stories project using a Top Edge Recognition award for excellence in technology integration. Teachers interested in running an oral history project can contact Urban School technology manager Howard Levin and should think about attending his summer teacher workshop.
Student News Action Network
This student-produced current events journal includes contributions from around the world and is led by five student-bureaus: The American School of Doha, Bishops Diocesan College, International School Bangkok, International School of Luxembourg, and Washington International School. The students have cleverly adopted the free Ning platform and far-flung pupils work tirelessly to create an interactive, multimedia-rich, and student-driven online paper.
“Great Debate of 2008″
Tom Daccord created a wiki and a private online social media for its”Great Debate of 2008” project, a student exploration and discussion of candidates and issues enclosing the 2008 presidential election. The job connected students across the nation in a wiki and a personal online social network to share ideas and information associated with the 2008 presidential election. Pupils post information on campaign issues to the wiki and partake in online discussions and survey together with other pupils in the private online social networking.
The Flat Classroom Project
The award-winning Flat Classroom project brings together large school and middle school students from around the globe to explore the notions presented in Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat. These collaborative endeavors harness the most effective Web 2.0 tools available including wikis, online social networks, digital storytelling, podcasts, social bookmarking, and much more.

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