Social+Studies

[|National Archives document site] This site has documents and activities for classroom use, a way for you to create your own activities, and a place for students to save their work. [|C-Span Classroom] C-Span is dedicated to helping students learn about their political rights and have created an educational website for that purpose. Teachers, who register, (for free) will be able to search for short clips of C-SPAN video. Many of the video clips are available for download too. Teachers can also find discussion questions, which include primary source materials, as well. Teachers also get a chance to ** rate the video using the C-Span rating system **allowing educators to rate video clips, add comments, and share them with other educators. New video clips are added regularly, and are searchable by keyword, speaker, or teaching concept.

C-Span Classroom is a newly password-protected site that remains free of charge. Membership gives educators access to the downloadable video clips, and access to the search functionality on the site. Once logged in you can explore the full content of the new web site geared for social studies teachers.

E-mail updates about C-SPAN programs and C-SPAN Classroom web resources relevant to social studies education. (For DAILY updates of C-SPAN programming, sign up for an additional service, [|C-SPAN Alert] !).

A searchable multimedia database archive of politically significant audio material for teachers and students. This project is supported by a major grant from [|the National Endowment for the Humanities Teaching With Technology Program] in collaboration with [|Michigan State University] and [|the National Gallery of the Spoken Word]. The material covers speeches, formal addresses, conventions, and other events to provide an accessible source of audio information to enliven instruction and scholarship in history and politics and to enable easy access for all persons to the rich audio archives of American history and politics. You will need either the Real Player or the QuickTime Player, both of which should be on your computer already, and the files will “stream” over the Internet. The audio files will not download onto your computer. You can look for files by either running a search or by browsing the files by title, speaker, or date. In most cases, you will also receive a description of the audio file and a summary of the recording. Some of the audio material you will find includes President Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural speech, President Kennedy’s speech on the Cuban missile crisis, and Martin Luther King’s, “I have a dream” speech. An extra benefit to this site is that it's not just for Civics teachers; there are other resources available for different events throughout history!
 * [|History and Politics Out Loud] **

[|Hyper History Online] HyperHistory is an expanding scientific project presenting 3,000 years of world history with an interactive combination of synchronoptic lifelines, timelines, and maps. Over 2,000 files are interconnected throughout the site. In addition to that HyperHistory provides several hundred links to the World Wide Web. On their site, HyperHistory is broken into several sections including: The [|History] section displays timelines for the major civilizations with many text. This is a great section for ENCORE too, because it lists timelines for famous artists and composers. The [|Events] section is growing monthly. At the present time it reaches back from 2004 to 1790 and depicts events on a year to year basis. The [|People] section reaches from 1,000 BC to the present. It displays lifelines for over 1,000 persons in science, culture, religion, and politics. There is also a section dedicated to maps with ancient civilizations and modern day maps. Students needing research can also look at the culture, religion, and politics of several civilizations and countries.

[|memorialhall.mass.edu/home.html] This site is for more than just social studies. I found several activities that could also work for math and science. The site includes an array of classroom lessons on the elementary, middle, and secondary levels written and tested by classroom teachers under the direction of curriculum specialists. The curricula use primary resources available on the site. Activities are designed for independent and cooperative learning. It includes a large library of primary resources, curricula, and interactive student activities; presented in age-appropriate, user-friendly formats.

You should also check out the Digital Collection, which  features approximately 2,000 objects and transcribed document pages from Memorial Hall Museum and Library. An image of each of these items appears on an **Item Page** accompanied by interpretive text available on age-appropriate levels. Museum staff authored the text content with review by teachers, school librarians, and nationally recognized scholars. The Digital Collection may be explored in a number of ways: This site will be similar to //unitedstreaming// users, in that anything you find can be kept in a “my content” folder, called My Collection. With the click of the "Add to My Collection" button available on each Item Page, a user can compile a virtual collection drawn from the museum's Digital Collection. This "collecting" can be done just for fun or as part of a user's research project. My Collection can be printed out in its own format and can be placed on any of several themed chronologies to create a customized [|Chronology].
 * A user may browse through an assortment of topical mini-exhibits;
 * or search widely by engaging a full text search that draws on both the curatorial database and the Digital Collection's labels;
 * or utilize an assisted search with drop-down menus of helpful terms, topics, time periods and museum item categories and nomenclature.