Best U.S. History Web Sites

Library of Congress

An outstanding and valuable site for American history and general research. Contains primary and secondary files, exhibits, map sets, prints and photographs, audio recordings and motion images. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contains the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well. The Library of Congress also provides a Learning Page that provides tools, activities, ideas, and features for teachers and students.
The Library of Congress American Memory particularly is a superb resource for American history and general studies. Included are multimedia collections of photos, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text that is unread. Utilize the Teachers section to explore primary set collections and themed resources. Teachers can get updates on new programs, professional development opportunities, and Library programs, events and services.
The Library of Congress: Teachers
The new Library of Congress Teachers page provides resources and tools to using Library of Congress primary source documents from the classroom and contain exceptional lesson plans, record analysis tools, offline and online activities, timelines, presentations and professional development tools.
Center for History and New Media: History Matters
A production of the American Social History Project/Center of Media and Learning, City of University New York, along with the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, History Matters is an Excellent online resource for history teachers and pupils. One of the many digital tools are lesson plans, syllabi, links, and exhibits. The middle for History and New Media’s tools include a listing of”best” internet sites, links to syllabi and lesson plans, essays on history and new media, a link to their excellent History Topics web site for U.S. History, and more. The CHNM History News Network is a weekly web-based magazine that has articles by several historians. Resources are designed to benefit specialist historians, high school instructors, and students of the history.
Teaching American History
This is a wonderful assortment of thoughtful and thorough lesson plans and other tools on teaching American history. Each job was created by teachers in Virginia at a Center for History and New Media workshop. All projects include a variety of lesson plans and resources, and a few even offer instructional videos on source analysis. The lesson plans cover a range of subjects in American history and utilize engaging and interesting sources, activities, discussion questions, and assessments. Take your time surfing –you will find many to choose from.
National Archives and Records Administration
The NARA delivers federal archives, exhibits, classroom resources, census records, Hot Topics, and more. Besides its newspaper holdings (which would show the Earth 57 days ) it has over 3.5 billion digital records. Users can research individuals, places, events as well as other popular topics of interest, as well as ancestry and military records. There are also features exhibits drawing from many of the NARA’s favorite sources. Among the most requested holdings would be the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, WWII photographs, along with the Bill of Rights.
The National Archives: Teachers’ Resources
The National Archives Lesson Plans section comprises incorporates U.S. main documents and its excellent teaching tasks correlate to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government. Courses are organized by chronological age, from 1754 to the present.
Digital Vaults
The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of history that assesses thousands of documents, photos, and parts of history that were incorporated in an electronic format. Upon entering the homepage, the user is given eight random archives to choose from. Clicking on one provides a description along with a brief history of the archive, as well as displays a huge assortment of similar archives. The consumer has the capability to shuffle, rearrange, collect, and explore archives, as well as search for specific points in history utilizing a key word search. Even though too little initial organization or index might seem overwhelming, Digital Vaults is a superbly imaginative source for investigating history in a compiled way.
Teach Docs With DocsTeach, teachers can create interactive background activities that incorporate over 3,000 primary-source substances in many different media in the National Archives. Tools on the website are made to teach critical thinking skills and integrate interactive elements such as maps, puzzles, and charts.
Our Documents 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 students and teachers.
PBS Online
A fantastic resource for information on a myriad of historical events and personalities. PBS’s assorted and diverse web exhibits supplement their television show and normally include a list of every incident, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, primary sources, a glossary, photos, maps, and links to pertinent sites. PBS productions include American Experience, Frontline and People’s Century. Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities — arranged by topic.
PBS Teacher Resource Go to the PBS Teacher Source for classes and activities — arranged by topic and grade level — and subscribe to their newsletter. Groups include American History, World History, History on Television, and Biographies. Many lessons incorporate primary sources. Some lessons require viewing PBS video, but many don’t.
Smithsonian Education
The Smithsonian Education website is divided simply into three chief categories: Educators, Families, and Students. The Educators section is keyword searchable and features lesson programs — lots of pertaining to background. The Students section features an interactive”Keys of the Smithsonian” that educates about the special collections in the Smithsonian.
The Cost of Freedom: Americans at War
This Smithsonian website logically incorporates Flash video and text to analyze armed conflicts between the U.S. from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Each conflict includes a brief video clip, statistical advice, and a pair of artifacts. There’s also a Civil War puzzle, an exhibition self-guide, and a teacher’s guide. The New American Roles (1899-present) section contains an introductory film and short essay on the conflict in addition to historic artifacts and images.
Edsitement — The Best of the Humanities on the Web 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 site features reviewed links to top websites, professionally developed lesson plans, classroom activities, materials to help with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You are able to search lesson plans from subcategory and grade level; middle school courses are the most numerous.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There’s much excellent stuff for art students, teachers, 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 includes representative art from the Museum’s collection, a graph of time periods, a map of the region, a summary, and a listing of important events. The timelines — accompanied by world, regional, and sub-regional maps — provide a linear outline of art history, and allow people to compare and contrast art from around the globe at any time ever. There is plenty more here besides the Timeline:”Just for Fun” has interactive activities for kids,”A Closer Look” assesses the”hows and whys” behind Met objects (like George Washington Crossing the Delaware),”Artist” enables visitors to access biographical materials on a selection of artists in addition to general information about their work, and”Topics and Cultures” presents past and current cultures with special attributes on the Met’s collections and displays.
C-SPAN from the Classroom
Access C-SPAN’s complete program archives including all videos. C-SPAN from the Classroom is a free membership service which features advice and resources to assist teachers in their use of primary source, public affairs video out of C-SPAN television. You do not need to be a member to utilize C-SPAN online resources in your classroom, but also membership includes entry to teaching ideas, activities and classroom tools.
Digital History
This impressive site from Steven Mintz at the University of Houston includes an up-to-date U.S. history textbook; annotated primary resources on United States, Mexican American, and Native American background, and slavery; and succinct essays on the background of ethnicity and immigration, movie, private life, and science and technology. Visual histories of Lincoln’s America and America’s Reconstruction contain text from Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney. The Doing History feature lets users rebuild the past through the voices of children, gravestones, advertising, and other primary sources. Reference resources include classroom handouts, chronologies, encyclopedia articles, glossaries, along with an abysmal 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 lets users pose questions to professional historians.
Civil Rights Special Collection
The Teachers’ Domain Civil Rights Collection is Made by WGBH Boston, in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Washington University at St. Louis. Materials are free but you have to sign up. Features an impressive array of sound, video, and text sources out of Frontline and American Experience shows, Eyes on the Prize, along with other resources. Also offers an interactive Civil Rights movement deadline and four lesson plans: Campaigns for Financial Freedom/Re-Examining Brown/Taking a Stand/Understanding White Supremacy.
Science and Technology of World War II
One of the most impressive technology improvements of the modern era occurred during World War II along with the National World War II Memorial has 8000 objects directly related to science and technology. This impressive display contains an animated timeline, actions (such as sending encrypted messages), professional sound answers to science and engineering questions, lesson plans, a quiz, essays, and much more. An impressive demonstration.
Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008
Voting America examines long-term patterns in presidential election politics in the United States in the 1840s to now in addition to several patterns in recent congressional election politics. The project delivers a vast spectrum of interactive and animated visualizations of how Americans voted in elections over the past 168 years. The visualizations may be used to explore individual elections beyond the country level down to different counties, allowing for more complex analysis. The interactive maps highlight exactly how significant third parties have played in Western political history. You could also find expert analysis and comment videos which share a few of the most intriguing and important trends in American political history.
Do History: Martha Ballard
DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into 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 records: diaries, maps, letters, court records, town records, and much more as well as a searchable copy of this twenty-seven year diary of Martha Ballard. DoHistory engages users interactively with historic artifacts and documents from the past and introduces visitors to the critical questions and issues raised when”doing” history. DoHistory was developed and preserved by the Film Study Center at Harvard University and is hosted and maintained by the Middle for History and New Media, George Mason University.
The Valley of the Dead The Valley of the Shadow depicts two communities, 1 Northern and one Southern, through the experience of the American Civil War. The project focuses on 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. Those sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records. Students can learn more about the conflict and write their own foundations or rebuild the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families. The project is intended 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 site that focuses on the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, with the goal of commemorating and reinterpreting the occasion from the viewpoints of all of the cultural groups who were present — Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, French, and English. The site brings together many resources — historic scenes, tales of people’s lives, historic artifacts and papers, essays, voices and tunes, historic maps, along with a timeline — to illuminate broad and rival perspectives on this spectacular event.
Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition
The Missouri Historical Society has developed an extensive award-winning web site and web-based curriculum developed to match their Lewis and Clark, The National Bicentinnal Exhibiton. Written for grades 4-12, the units focus on nine important themes of the display and feature tens of thousands of primary sources in the display. 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 perspective. The internet display has two segments. One is a thematic approach that highlights the material from the main galleries of this exhibit. 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 Site for 2002 by the Internet and has won a ton of other internet awards. The website is based on a traveling exhibition now showing at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey and bills itself as”an online journey to the ancient spectacle of athletes and gods.” The Sport of Life and Death features dazzling special effects courtesy of Macromedia Flash technologies and its overall layout and organization are excellent. 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 that the Mesoamerican ballgame, the oldest organized sport ever. The sport is clarified through a beautiful and engaging combination of images, text, expert commentary, and movie. Visitors can even compete in a contest!
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 big parts: the background of Chicago from the 19th century, and the way 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 creative, engaging and technology-infused classes & web 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 research the plight of homeless teenagers during the Great Depression and then create their own fictionalized account of a day in the life span 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
See”Telling Their Stories” and see, see, and listen to perhaps the very best student-created oral history project in the nation. High School students in the Urban School of San Francisco have generated three notable oral history interviews featured at this site: Holocaust Survivors and Refugees, World War II Camp Liberators, and Japanese-American Internees. Urban school students conducted, filmed, and transcribed interviews, generated countless movie files connected with each transcript, and then posted the full-text, full-video interviews with this public site. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has recognized Urban School’s Telling Their Stories project using a Top Edge Recognition award for excellence in engineering integration. Teachers interested in conducting an oral history project can contact Urban School technology manager Howard Levin and should consider attending his summer teacher workshop.
Student News Action Network
This student-produced current events journal includes contributions from around the globe and is led by five student-bureaus: The American School of Doha, Bishops Diocesan College, International School Bangkok, International School of Luxembourg, along with Washington International School. The students have cleverly adopted the free Ning platform and far-flung students 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 the”Great Debate of 2008” job, a student exploration and discussion of candidates and issues enclosing the 2008 presidential election. The job connected pupils across the nation at a wiki and a private online social media to share ideas and information associated with the 2008 presidential elections. Students post advice on campaign issues into the wiki and partake in online discussions and survey together with different students in the personal online social networking.
The Flat Classroom Project
The award-winning Flat Classroom project brings together high school and middle school students from around the world to explore the ideas presented in Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat. These collaborative projects harness the most effective Web 2.0 tools available including wikis, online social networks, digital storytelling, podcasts, social bookmarking, and more.