Best U.S. History Web Sites

Library of Congress

An outstanding and valuable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary files, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion pictures. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contains the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and enlightening as well. The Library of Congress also offers a Learning Page that provides activities, tools, thoughts, and attributes for teachers and students.
The Library of Congress American Memory particularly is a superb resource for American history and general research. Included are multimedia collections of photos, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text that is unread. Utilize the Teachers section to research main 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 tools and resources for using Library of Congress primary source documents from the classroom and contain excellent lesson plans, record analysis tools, online and offline tasks, timelines, presentations and professional development resources.
Center for History and New Media: History Matters
A Creation 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 pupils. One of the many digital tools are lesson plans, syllabi, links, and displays. The middle for History and New Media’s tools include a list of”best” internet sites, links to syllabi and lesson plans, essays on history and new websites, a link to their excellent History Topics web site for U.S. History, and much more. The CHNM History News Network is a weekly web-based magazine that features articles by various historians. Resources are designed to benefit specialist historians, higher school instructors, and students of history.
Teaching American History
This is a wonderful assortment of thoughtful and thorough lesson plans and other tools on teaching 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 tools, and a few even offer instructional videos on supply analysis. The lesson plans cover a range of subjects in American history and use interesting and engaging sources, activities, discussion questions, and assessments. Take your time browsing–there are many to select from.
National Archives and Records Administration
The NARA offers federal archives, displays, classroom resources, census documents, Hot Topics, and more. Besides its newspaper holdings (which would circle the Earth 57 times) it’s over 3.5 billion electronic records. Users can research individuals, places, events and other popular themes of interest, as well as ancestry and military records. Additionally, there are features exhibits drawing from many of the NARA’s favorite sources. Among the most asked 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 activities correlate to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government. Lessons are organized by averaging age, from 1754 to the present.
Digital Vaults
The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of background that assesses thousands of documents, photographs, and pieces of history that were integrated 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 that archive, as well as exhibits a huge variety of similar archives. The consumer has the capability to shuffle, rearrange, collect, and explore archives, in addition to search for specific points in history using a key word search. Even though too little initial organization or index might appear overpowering, Digital Vaults is a wonderfully imaginative source for investigating history in a digitally compiled way.
Teach Docs With DocsTeach, teachers can create interactive background activities that incorporate more than 3,000 primary-source substances in a variety of media from the National Archives. Tools on the website are made to teach critical thinking skills and incorporate interactive elements such as puzzles, maps, and charts.
Our Documents Offers 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings, that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965. Features a teacher’s toolbox and competitions for students and teachers.
PBS Online
A fantastic source for advice on a myriad of historic events and personalities. PBS’s various and diverse web displays supplement their television show and generally include a list of each incident, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, primary sources, a glossary, photos, maps, and links to pertinent websites. 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 classes and activities — arranged by topic and grade level — and subscribe to their newsletter. Categories include American History, World History, History on Television, and Biographies. Many lessons incorporate primary sources. Some courses require watching PBS video, but many don’t.
Smithsonian Education
The Smithsonian Education website is divided only into three chief classes: Educators, Families, and Students. The Educators section is keyword searchable and includes lesson programs — many pertaining to history. The Students section comes with an interactive”Secrets of the Smithsonian” that teaches about the special collections in the Smithsonian.
The Price of Freedom: Americans at War
This Smithsonian website logically incorporates Flash text and video to examine armed conflicts involving the U.S. in the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Each conflict contains a brief video clip, statistical advice, and a set of artifacts. There is also a Civil War puzzle, an exhibition self-guide, and a teacher’s guide. The New American Roles (1899-present) segment 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 website features reviewed links to top sites, professionally developed lesson plans, classroom activities, materials to assist with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You are able to search lesson plans from subcategory and grade level; middle school lessons are the most numerous.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There is much excellent material 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 incorporates representative artwork from the Museum’s collection, a graph of time periods, a map of the region, an overview, and a listing of important events. The timelines — accompanied by world, regional, and sub-regional maps — provide a linear outline of art history, and permit people to compare and contrast art from across the globe at any time in history. There is 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 items (like George Washington Crossing the Delaware),”Artist” enables visitors to get biographical stuff on a choice of artists in addition to general information regarding their work, and”Themes and Cultures” presents past and present cultures with special features on the Met’s collections and displays.
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 primary source, public affairs video from C-SPAN television. You do not need to become a member to utilize C-SPAN online resources in your classroom, but membership includes access to teaching ideas, tasks and classroom tools.
Digital History
This impressive site from Steven Mintz at the University of Houston comes with an up-to-date U.S. history textbook; annotated primary resources on United States, Mexican American, and Native American history, 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 include text by 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, 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 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 array of sound, video, and text sources out of Frontline and American Experience shows, Eyes on the Prize, and other resources. 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
One 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 linked to science and engineering. This impressive exhibit includes an animated timeline, actions (such as sending encoded messages), expert audio answers to science and technology 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 from the 1840s to today in addition to several patterns lately congressional election politics. The job delivers a wide spectrum of animated and interactive visualizations of the way Americans voted in elections over the past 168 decades. The visualizations can be used to research individual elections past the state level down to individual counties, which allows for more complex analysis. The interactive maps emphasize exactly how important third parties have played in American political history. You can also locate expert analysis and commentary videos that discuss a few of the most interesting and important trends in American political history.
Do Background: Martha Ballard
DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of regular people in the past. It’s 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 thousands of downloadable pages from original documents: diaries, letters, maps, court records, town records, and much more as well as a searchable copy of the twenty-seven year diary of Martha Ballard. DoHistory engages users interactively with historical artifacts and documents from the past and introduces people to the critical questions and issues raised when”doing” history. DoHistory was developed and maintained 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 Shadows The Valley of the Shadow depicts two communities, one 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 presents a hypermedia archive of thousands of resources that makes a social history of their coming, combating, and aftermath of the Civil War. These sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records. Students may learn more about the conflict and write their own foundations or reconstruct the life stories of girls, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families. The project is meant for secondary schools, community colleges, libraries, and universities.
Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts has established a rich and impressive website that concentrates on the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, with the objective 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 site brings together many resources — historic scenes, tales of people’s lives, historical artifacts and documents, essays, voices and tunes, historical maps, and a timeline — to light broad and competing perspectives with this dramatic 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 match their own Lewis and Clark, The National Bicentinnal Exhibiton. Written for grades 4-12, the components concentrate on nine important topics of the exhibit and feature hundreds of primary sources in the display. The program uses the Lewis and Clark expedition as case studies for larger themes like Diplomacy, Mapping, Animals, Language, and Trade and Property. It presents both the Euro-American perspective and a particular Native American perspective. The online exhibit has two segments. One is a thematic approach that highlights the content from the main galleries of the display. The other is a map-based journey that follows the expedition and presents main 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 Museums and the Internet and has won a ton of other internet awards. The site is based on a traveling exhibition currently showing at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey and bills itself as”an online travel into the ancient spectacle of gods and athletes.” The Sport of Life and Death features amazing special effects owing to Macromedia Flash technologies and its general design and organization are superb. There are useful interactive maps, timelines, and samples of art in the Explore the Mesoamerican World section. The attention of the site, however, is that the Mesoamerican ballgame, the oldest organized sport in history. The sport is clarified through a beautiful and engaging combination of images, text, expert commentary, and video. Visitors can even 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 big components: the background of Chicago in the 19th century, and also the way the Chicago Fire has been recalled over time. Included are essays, galleries, and even resources.
Tech 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 action incorporates blogging and podcasting and calls on students to find out more about the plight of homeless teenagers through the Great Depression and then create their own fictionalized account of a day in the life of a Hobo. This undertaking will probably be featured 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 see, watch, and listen to possibly the very best student-created oral history project at the nation. 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 ran, filmed, and transcribed interviews, created countless movie files associated with each transcript, and then posted the full-text, full-video interviews on this public site. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has acknowledged Urban School’s Telling Their Stories project using a Leading 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 ought to 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, 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 network for the”Great Debate of 2008” project, a student exploration and discussion of candidates and issues enclosing the 2008 presidential election. The job connected pupils around 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 to the wiki and partake in online discussions and survey together with different students in the private online social network.
The Flat Classroom Project
The award-winning Flat Classroom job brings together high school and middle school students from all over the world to learn more about the notions presented in Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat. These collaborative projects harness the most powerful Web 2.0 tools available including wikis, online social networks, digital storytelling, podcasts, social bookmarking, and much more.

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