Social Studies

I love that activities are split up between age groups. The interactive maps are fantastic.

This site makes excellent use of primary source documents to portray the climate of Soviet-US relations in the Cold War. Telegram cables between the govts and reports from USSR Central Committee meetings.

I would make wide use of this site in a U.S. history class. I would be able to show my students the Soviet perspective on US activities during the Cold War, which I think would be valuable as a comparison to our historical accounts of the same events.

As far as usability, it is a rather basic site. However it does provide a wealth of primary source documents that would be helpful for any social studies teacher.

This site utilizes historic photos of different sites of interest from the Library of Congress and is associated with the National Registry of Historic Places.

This site could be very easily used in a U.S. history class to either plan a field trip to different historical sites, give students perspective on what events happened where and give them something highly visual to augment the lesson.

The site is useful in that it contains an interactive map of the sites, pictures of events that occured at the sites and an indepth list of sites by state. However, one issue is that at least for me the different pictures and site graphics took awhile to load making it less than user friendly.

This site contains mainly secondary source information, actual photos and a primary source account of the court of inquiry.

I would use this site for an indepth study of the Maine incident leading to the start of the Spanish American War. Also it includes a comparison of the Maine disaster and the World Trade Center attack that might prove interesting to broach as a topic of discussion.

This site contains a lot of information, which would no doubt be useful to social studies teachers. It contains various links, a good bibliography and other items of interest. Of particular value would be the bibliography which would allow for a more indepth examination of the topic.

This website is provided by the National Archives as an "online exhibit" allowing teachers to provide a simulated in person walk through of the Constitution exhibit.  While it does not list sources on the main page, linked articles include bibliographic notes, and the page is provided by the U.S. Government's National Archives, which in itself is a credible source.

I could use this site during a civics course, especially for the specialized study of the constitution.  I could print an oversized hi-res image to have children touch and interact with, as well as the online availability allows them to continue research on their own.  

Based on the criteria from UC Berkeley, I find this site both incredibly useful, and also a great resource for any social studies teacher covering the US Constitution.   It is both credible, engaging, and ample in it's supplementary information regarding the constitution. In addition to being a map nerd, I am a Constitution nerd, and this site is awesome.  

I would use this site if I was required to build my own curriculum for the grades which I was teaching.  It provides a comprehensive collection of big, intermediate, and close up views of content and how to segment it in different approaches.  It could be used in whole or as a supplement to the provided curriculum from a school district.

This site does not immediately provide the sources it uses.  However, when accessing the "Foundations of this Curriculum" link at the top, it leads to the manner in which the curriculum was developed, it's background, and the way in which it continues to be developed.

This site has very strong credibility.  It lists all the project officers, teachers, consultants, etc. that are contributing to the content of the website.  They show the updated material as it becomes available, and allows for evaluations to be offered.  It also has a comments page, which is admittedly very positive.  It also has a links page that links to sources, affiliates, and other useful sites. I think that give the standards provided by UC Berkeley, this site is a very credible option for new social studies teachers looking for help with lesson plans and organization of curriculum.

Data is sourced from the United Nations: the UNDP, Conference on Trade and Development Trade Tables, and Angus Maddison's World Economy: Historical Statistics.  At first glance, the data from which the maps are created is credible because it is from the UN with the exception of the maps sources from Angus Maddison.  The website is also a product of Sheffield University in the United Kingdom, which lends credibility.

The maps are divided into categories, and provide a great visual aid when talking about how different countries, regions, and continents utilize resources, have different birth and death rates, and other factors based on geography that can help to be visualized.

This website is very credible, especially based on the standards from the UC Berkeley website.  They cite their sources on their "Data" page, include credits to those who helped them, and include the sources that assisted in the formation of the maps.  They include contacts, who created the web page, and statistics on how they update errors, etc. Overall, not only is this website interesting to me because I am a map nerd, but I think this would be very useful in geography, economics, and other social studies classes.

This section offers overviews of the Indian Ocean and the uses of it in different eras. This section is more helpful than the maps which, although visually appealing, are more confusing than helpful.

Offer a detailed 13-page bibliography of secondary sources used when creating this website. Seems very scholarly and accurate.

This section is the one most applicable to teaching as it offers actually full lesson plans, including a deeper description for the teacher of what the lesson plans hope to accomplish. They also plan out how you might use their information to make a one year or two year course with it. Very thorough and very helpful for world history teachers.

Overall, this site is very flexible and offers lots of resoures to teachers. However, some of the sources you find are someone suspect, so you have to keep your attenas up one searching. The best part of the site is the part where you can communicate with other teachers about ideas to use in your classroom.

Given the relatively quick pace of the narration, this video would probably be best used to introduce the featured concepts in preparation for an in-depth lecture, or for review of the material once it has been explored in class.

Given the current cupcake craze, it could be fun to use this video as a starting point from which students could examine the economics of an actual cupcake busines.

The low-tech approach used in this video is appealing for its lack of distractions.

This site includes secondary source information on several events that are important in Western Civilization.

This site does not include information from East Asia, so it couldn't be used a world history course.

These strategies are helpful for teaching students how to look at and interpret visual images in general.

Reviews section useful to teachers for keeping informed about new quality source materials.

Archival resources from museums, universities and other organizations.