2011Reference

Ellis Island is an extremely important part of American History because our nation is founded on immigrants.  This site allows users to search the Ellis Island records for people who entered the country and discover more information about our own families.  Genealogy is something that isn't discussed much with students, but it is imperative for students to know our history.  Because we are a nation if immigrants, we all have relations to other countries and making that connection can be very important.  I would love to see high schoolers use this site to help investigate family origins.  Even if there were no connections to Ellis Island, they could choose from the list of more famous people to arrive.  The original documents that are captured on this site are a definite piece of our history that is worth investigating and sharing with others.

This resource for teachers and students has lots of information. The section for educators offers an educator's corner as well as links to various sites. Students can identify with K-5, or 6-8. They can research information about arts, computers, careers, math, money, government, health, science, and social studies. There are also links to games and activities and YouTube videos.

Kids.gov: The Official Kids' Site of the U.S. Government is a portal for students who are learning about the U.S. government; specifically in the disciplines of math, computers, money, science, social studies, or the arts (music, reading/writing, and art). The site is geared for three specific audiences: K-5, 6-8, and educators and provides over 2,000 web pages from government agencies, schools, and educational organizations that emphasize federal, state, military sites. This site is easy to navigate and has a "Hot Topics" tab that provide links to The Constitution, kids.gov YouTube channel, activities and games, American history, state websites, and the different branches of government. All of these sites make it easy for both student and educator to explore and learn.

This is one part of the site, "History Matters," and it is all about helping students and teachers understand and make use of primary sources. There are all kinds of activities to help learn how to read and analyze letters, photographs, songs, cartoons, etc. On other parts of the site, you can find primary sources documenting American past.

This website has many lesson plans and units prepared for teachers using primary sources documents that were found at the National Archives. Covering the American Revolution to the present, the lessons focus on sequencing, details, interpretation, and connections of events. Great for Middle School through high school.

Students use primary sources to learn about historical events. There are activities ready to use in the classroom or modify existing activies to meet your classroom needs.

The National Archives Experience Docs Teach site allows its users to register and bookmark activities while allowing them to create their own interactive activities for the classroom. The site is designed to motivate students to take an interest in what they are learning by providing materials that sparks interest, provides multiple perspectives, and helps teach students how to recognize bias and question where the information they are reading is coming from. The site provides ready-to-use classroom materials as well as access to thousands of primary sources from the National Archives that allow the teacher to promote further investigation while making connections between the past and present.

PBS Teachers is a portal that provides preK-12 educational resources that include thousands of lesson plans, teaching activities, on-demand video assets, and interactive games and simulations that correlate to state and national educational. The site allows its user an advanced search option to fine tune their search for specific lessons by grade level, subject, and resource request (i.e.) lesson plans, video, interactive, slideshow. For educators, the site also provides a unique opportunity to subscribe and join different educator discussion forums as well as theme based theme-based widgets containing links to high-quality activity packs, resources, and activities for multiple grade levels.

Scholastic.com is a gateway with an overabundance of activities for both teacher and student. Scholastic provides easy to navigate tabs for locating resources and tools, strategies and ideas, student activities, and books and authors by grade levels (Pre-K-12). The choices are filtered by grade, subject, and activities to effectively narrow down the user's search (i.e.), math, social studies, reading, sports, special education, language arts and animals. Once the user has selected the necessary discipline, they are able to use interactive and engaging web and whiteboard activities as well as a variety of lesson plans that are geared toward the 21st Century learner.

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's photo library is a primary source for ocean and nature photographs. It is arranged by topic collections. Some of my favorites include: National Severe Storms Laboratory Collection (severe weather), It's a Small World Collection (around the world in alphabetical order), and Coral Kingdom Collection (vertebrates/invertebrates,plants). Excellent examples are provided for use with student lessons (i.e. coral kingdom for living vs. nonliving organisms) as well as student research materials.

The ipl2 website not only allows its users to access both national and international newspapers and magazines online, but it also provides its users quick and simple ways to search for materials with the click of a mouse (i.e.) for kids or teens, resources by subject, or special collections created by ipl2. The site permits researchers to search specific categories such as: art and humanities, education, law, government and political science, as well special collections for presidents and literary criticisms. The site offers a unique 24 hour a day help desk, where students and volunteer library and information science professionals provide answers to your questions via email.

The Institute for Holocaust Education site provides educational resources, workshops, survivor testimony for both students and educators of all ages and all levels of learning. The site is designed to ensure appropriate, accurate, and authentic lessons/materials are provided to the students so they are able to understand the political, social, and intellectual conditions that led to the Holocaust while recognizing stereotypes, prejudice and racism. The site also provides its users with additional references (i.e.) books, web links, exhibits, and a website dedicated to the Nebraska Holocaust Memorial.

The British Museum provides a section specifically designed for children to help explore countries of the world and showcase actual museum artifacts that go with those continents.  The Museum Explorer shows a map from which users can highlight a country or region of the world and topic for that country to see artifacts from the museum and a brief explanation.  Students can choose the topics: birds and beasts, tools and technology, death, gods and spirits, daily life, leaders and rulers, dress and ornament, and warfare.   6th graders learning about the continent of Africa could access Museum Explorer, select leaders and rulers and discover that African leaders mainly consisted of elders and chiefs of tribes, but Egypt made leadership in Africa well known.  There are five artifacts shown on the African Leaders and Rulers page.  The Story of King Solomon and Queen Sheba is a Ethiopian painting from AD 1971 that shows the reign of the king and queen.  I can see students investing their time in this site to see actual artifacts from the specified regions.

The museum of Edgar Allan Poe collection database includes primary source documents such as letters, photos, and personal/family items. This is a good literary resource for middle and high school students-complete with teacher and student resources. Great opportunity for English/Language Arts department and library collaboration.

This is a cool website because users can manipulate the documents, create their own collections, and use the documents they collect to make a poster or movie all from one website. It is easily searchable by subject and returns a variety of document types. The technology could also fall under the AASL standards of using technology to create new ideas and products to share.

I really liked this site, I thought the features on it were different and it was very visual. You can shuffle and look at random documents or use the search function. When you are looking at an item there are tags you can click on to look at similar items and also additonal links for related websites. You can add documents to your "collection" by dragging the image. There is also a backtrack function where you can look at all the documents you've look at incase you can't find something you previously saw and didn't move to your collection. There are pathway challenges which are an activity using documents and you can also create posters or movies.

This website is set up so you can click on a picture of a historical document, event, or landmark, and it pulls all kinds of related articles, in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. The main document is in the center of the screen, with everything else surrounding it. It is totally visual, and would be great for middle school to high school students.

Smithsonian Folkways introduces cultures from around the world through the language of music.  Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian created to capture music "of the people, by the people, for the people".  The Tools for Teaching dropdown menu allows educators to find lessons, workshops, and more.  The lessons are pinpointed on a map and can be selected specifically by region.  The lessons vary for grade levels, but are primarily designed for 3rd and up.  Students begin learning about world history and specific countries in 6th grade.  Smithsonian Folkways would allow students to understand the culture in which they are studying through another viewpoint and language - music.

Excellent starting point for Shakespeare research. This site also provides links to sites with images of rare books, manuscripts, photographs and music.

This site offers primary sources, lesson plans, digital narratives and a host of other features for the classroom. It would be a great asset to anyone studying the American South.

"The Labyrinth provides free, organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies through a World Wide Web server at Georgetown University. The Labyrinth's easy-to-use menus and links provide connections to databases, services, texts, and images on other servers around the world. Each user will be able to find an Ariadne's thread through the maze of information on the Web. This project not only provides an organizational structure for electronic resources in medieval studies, but also serves as a model for similar, collaborative projects in other fields of study. The Labyrinth project is open-ended and is designed to grow and change with new developments in technology and in medieval studies." http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu/

This section of America's Story helps learners gain a brief insight into each state.  There is a summary of how the state entered statehood, as well as some key information.  The image that appears when a state is clicked on is the state flag, state capital, state flower, and another image associated with the state.  There are also links to other stories about the state at the bottom and on the side of the page.  Students begin learning about their own state in 4th grade and more of the country in 5th grade.  This site provides a good overview of the state with primary source images and documents.

This is an "online museum of historic newspapers" and other historical documents. It provides users a chance to peruse documents dating back to the 15th century. It includes eyewitness accounts, letters, government documents, and of course, newspapers. This would be a great resource for any upper elementary through high school student studying any part of American history.

This section of America's Story focuses on the Amazing Americans who have helped shape American History.  The people are categorized by their profession or what made them famous.  The biographical information for each person provides an great summary of why they were important, links to more stories, photos, and even a timeline of their life in relation to what was happening in America.  Students begin to learn about specific people in our nation's history in 3rd and 4th grade.  This site would lend itself to exploring more information about these people from the trusted source of the Library of Congress.

America's Story provides a great overview of American History in a simplified, easy-to-read manner.  The site is divided into five sections for easy navigation and to help users be able to identify what they need.  Students could use the See, Hear, and Sing section to understand the history of cartoons, children's songs, and various voice recordings.  The audio clips that are provided are directly from the Library of Congress and provide authentic learning experiences for students in second grade through 5th grade.