A Journey through Public History on the Web

Brent Borg

Reprinted from the OAH Magazine of History
16 (Winter 2002). ISSN 0882-228X
Copyright (c) 2002, Organization of American Historians
 

American Family Immigration History Center:
<http://www.ellisisland.org/>. This site allows students to ex plore the individual lives of the 22 million immigrants who came to Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. The site provides background on the immigration experience, a search engine to help discover immigrant relatives, and a link to the American Immigrant Wall of Honor.

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute: <http://bcri.bham.al.us/>.This web site features a comprehensive study of the men and women who led the fight for social and political equality in the 1950s and 1960s. Its educational resources include a free curriculum guide complete with lesson plans and discussion topics for students in grades K-12, as well as information on traveling exhibits.

Chicago Historical Society: <http://www.chicagohs.org/chshome.html>. The Chicago Historical Society's web site contains plans for both tour-guided and independent field trips, information on upcoming exhibitions, and student workshops (complete with curricula). The society specifically caters to grades 6-12 during the school year and also features the Voices from History Outreach Program, where teachers can invite actors who portray famous figures from Chicago and Illinois history to share their stories.

Colonial Williamsburg: <http://www.history.org/history/index.html>. Colonial Williamsburg is committed to the study of colonial society in North America. Its web site features resources for teachers that include planning for on-site study visits, as well as electronic field trips, which bring the experiences of Colonial Williamsburg to the classroom through film, satellite broadcast, and the Internet. Electronic field trips come complete with lesson plans, historical background, and facsimiles of original documents.

Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library: <http://www.trumanlibrary.org/index.html>. This site chronicles the presidency of Harry Truman through photographs, correspondence, and other personal items. Resources for teachers include student research files (for grades 8-12 and college), a video loan program, exercises involving the use of primary sources, and a downloadable newsletter for educators.

Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum: <http://hoover.nara.gov/index.html>. In addition to providing a biographical sketch of Herbert Hoover from his college years at Stanford through his presidency, this site also features an online digital archive of many important Hoover documents. Educators interested in teaching about the life and times of the nation's thirty-first president will find a curriculum guide and lesson plans that emphasize the use of oral history and primary documents.

Indiana Historical Society: <http://www.indianahistory.org/>. Along with its many collections, workshops, and publications, the Indiana Historical Society also features a teacher's section devoted to bringing Indiana's heritage into the classroom. It contains resources, lesson plans, a listing of past and ongoing projects undertaken by teachers, and a schedule of activities for field trips to the Indiana Historical Society.

Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center: <http://www.historyisfun.org/>. This web site features educational resources for planning field trips to Jamestown or the Yorktown Victory Center, as well as classroom programs. The field trips include guided curriculum-based tours, while the in-class programs feature topics, lesson plans, worksheets, and documents that can all be downloaded.

Minnesota Historical Society: <http://www.mnhs.org/>. The Minnesota Historical Society offers a variety of ways for educators to teach students about the state's past. Information is available for planning visits to the society's museum as well as over 1,500 sites included in the National Register of Historic Places. The web site also features a series of programs that include visits by costumed historical figures, classroom instruction by society historians, and information on teacher workshops.

National Council for History Education (NCHE): <http://www.history.org/nche/>. NCHE is committed to promoting the importance of history in schools, colleges, museums, and society in general. Its web site features information on upcoming conferences and also offers suggestions for students to improve their writing skills. Resources for educators include booklets on building either world or United States history curricula. For more information on this organization, see Elaine Reed's article in this issue (pages 8-9).

National Council for Public History: <http://ncph.org/>. NCPH is devoted to the advancement of public history in a variety of settings. Its two publications, the Public Historian and Public History News, are available online in addition to a variety of links, photographs, and membership information. For more information on this organization, see David Vanderstel's article in this issue (pages 5-7).

National Museum of the American Indian: <http://www.nmai.si.edu/index.asp>. The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian is designed to promote understanding of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. The museum itself is staffed largely by members of various Native American nations, and the web site offers teaching resources that include downloadable books, planning for group visits, and recommended approaches to the study of indigenous cultures.

National Park Service: <http://nps.gov>. This web site offers creative ways to use national parks as on-site classrooms. The curricula, videos, traveling trunks and kits, and resource guides to the various parks are created through cooperation between the national park sites and neighboring school districts in order to meet national curriculum standards. The web site also includes information on teacher workshops, as well as a list of related sites.

Oklahoma City National Memorial: <http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/>. The Oklahoma City National Memorial web site provides a photo gallery of the memorial grounds and the memorial center and an online archive that features artifacts left at the memorial. The education component of the web site includes planning for classroom visits, a traveling trunk program, and suggested readings for students of all ages.

Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies: <http://educate.si.edu/>. As part of the Smithsonian Institution, this web site has a wealth of teaching resources for all grade levels including lesson plans, field trip information, and guides to creating classroom exhibits and museums.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History: <http://americanhistory.si.edu/>. The museum offers a variety of resources for teachers of American history. The site includes lesson plans, research collections, virtual exhibits, and suggested approaches to topical areas of American history.

Teaching with Historic Places: <http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/>. This web site uses the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to extend educational outreach to students of all ages. The site features hundreds of flexible lesson plans that can be accessed by location, theme, or time period. Other features include a listing of current publications pertaining to historic places and a framework for teachers to create their own lesson plans. For more information on the Teaching with Historic Places program, see Beth Boland's article in this issue (pages 19-21).

United States Historical Societies and State Archives Directory: <http://web.syr.edu/~jryan/infopro/hs.html>. This web site provides a list of links to historical society web sites for all fifty states.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: <http://www.ushmm.org/>. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's education section offers a series of online exhibitions and collections for teachers, as well as resources for planning a visit, ordering artifacts and other documents, coordinating programs with a museum educator, and arranging traveling exhibitions.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund: <http://www.vvmf.org/>. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was established to finance the Vietnam Veterans National Memorial in Washington, D.C. The web site features information on upcoming lectures and events throughout the country. Educators will find Vietnam: Echoes from the Wall to be particularly useful. It includes over four thousand source documents, video newsreels, and photographs to assist educators in teaching both the Vietnam War and broader issues of leadership, responsibility, and global understanding. For more information about the memorial, see Tricia Edwards's article in this issue (pages 53-55).

The Wisconsin Veterans Museum:
<http://museum.dva.state.wi.us/>. This site features information on Wisconsin veterans, specifically, and veterans from all states, in general. Classroom resources include planning for group visits, downloadable activity books, and information on Civil War traveling trunks to help educators provide hands-on learning about the Civil War and related topics.

Women of the West Virtual Museum: <http://www.wowmuseum.org/index.html>. This site features an online gallery, as well as an educational resource center complete with lesson plans, articles, and excerpts. Also available are links to sites exploring the complex social, economic, and political struggles facing women throughout the history of the American West.

Brent Borg is a senior history major at Indiana University. During the fall of 2001, he served as an undergraduate editorial intern for the Organization of American Historians.