Freedom House

The website www.freedomhouse.org provides a great deal of information that could be useful to a teacher or student in a social science class. Freedom House is an independent organization that monitors the state of freedom throughout the world. Started in 1972, Freedom House uses surveys to compile data about freedoms around the world. When the data is organized, it is placed on the website in the forms of charts, rankings, maps, and graphs that are easy to understand and interpret. Further, Freedom House does special reports on particular topics of interest every year that provide in depth information on issues of freedom across the globe. For example, recent special reports include “Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: 2010” and “The UN Human Rights Council Report Card: 2007-2009”. With the surveys and special reports, Freedom House is an excellent resource for a teacher planning a lesson or students working on projects or papers.

Freedom House provides current and topical information that would interest students. The topic of “Freedom” is a common theme throughout history. Therefore, the website could be used to compare historical standards of freedom to current standards today. The website could also be used to compare countries around the globe on current freedoms. Rankings include freedom of press, freedom of speech, and women’s rights. The website also includes a “newsroom” which has recent articles from press around the world related to freedom.

The applications for www.freedomhouse.org in a government class are numerous. The applications for a government class could include a source for current events, a source for country government analysis, or a source for historical country comparisons. In a history class, www.freedomhouse.org could serve to provide connections between historical governments and the modern day. Freedom House is a tremendous resource for students and teachers alike in the social science curriculum.

Federal Resources for Educational Excellence

The website Federal Resources for Educational Excellence is a beneficial tool for all teachers to appreciate. This site is a database that holds a collection of multiple links to other educational and historical websites. Within these website links, one can find pre-made lesson plans, primary documents, photographs, video clips and much more. Essentially, this website allows educators access to many resources from an array of sties not only for social studies teachers, but teachers of other content areas as well.

When first entering the site, a subject map appears where you can select from all content areas, which are then broken down more specifically. For instance, under U.S. History Topics, a teacher can look under the topic wars, and then click the link to a specific war, the American Revolution is one example. This link will take you to a featured resource page where multiple website links will appear along with the summary of the material within the links. Some of the featured website links include the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institute, the Library of Congress, etc. By entering these websites, teachers can find classroom activities, lessons, and material to enrich students learning.

Along the top of the subject map page a tool bar featuring an animations page, primary docs page, photos page, and entrepreneur’s page can be located. These pages provide an immense amount of resources, particularly valuable for history, which includes primary sources to further student’s learning of a specific period.

The Federal Resources for Educational Excellence provides teachers with limitless resources to enhance students learning and I would highly recommend using this site to begin learning more about specific events and creating lessons for students.

History Now

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History websites provides a plethora of information and resources for teachers and students. This website covers numerous time periods in American History including the Founding era, Slavery and Abolition, the Civil War, Lincoln era, Westward Expansion, Immigration, Early 20^th century, Great Depression and WWII, and American 1945-Present. Among each of these periods in U.S. history teacher are provided with multiple resources designed for lesson plans on the specific time period. A major strength of this website is its collection of primary source documents that provide valuable insight into what each time period special. In addition, teachers are provided with lesson plans for many different grade levels and appropriate resources to teach each lesson plan.

Another beneficial aspect of this website is its collection of scholarly articles that provide more insight and understanding of the issues they uncover, which will also the teachers to expand their knowledge. Teachers also given access to visual and audio resources that allow students to learn using new resources and methods that may better suit them. Another great aspect of this website is that lesson plans are made by credible teacher who have taught them and have been recognized for their good work. I feel completely confident in using this website as a teaching resource, and have concerns about recommending this website to other teachers.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/historynow/12_2005/lp3.php

Coolest. Educational. Resources. Site. Ever.

http://www.educationworld.com/

As future teachers, we are all aware that the internet provides a wealth of educational resources. Given this, educators and their students today have more available to them than ever before just a mouse click away. They can gain ideas from these online resources, learn from them, and much more in order to facilitate professional development and to enrich both their skills at teaching and the experiences of their students. There are literally web resources on every educational topic imaginable; from those committed to standards, teacher development, lesson plans, units over specific events or people, classroom management strategy, technology, and more.

However, after spending some time looking over and evaluating educational based web-sites there is one in particular that I as an educator plan to use and would recommend to colleagues. I believe this is by far the most comprehensive website I could find in terms of educational resources. I like the broad nature of this site as it allows teachers to research more than one aspect relevant to education. This site includes everything a teacher could need from an educational website. There are guides for lessons, professional development, administrators, issues, integrating technology, links to other educational sights, and much more. On top of containing a huge amount of work, an essential part of this website I believe can be a great educational tool is the schoolnotes.com link. This site allows teachers and parents to work together, giving parents all the information they may need to help their child.

Illinois Historical Digitization Projects

http://dig.lib.niu.edu/

The Illinois Historical Digitization Projects, sponsored by Northern Illinois University, has tons of information on Illinois history . This website has taken primary documents on the history of Illinois, and put them online in a data base. It has information about Illinois including information about Lincoln, the Civil War, the Guiled Age, and the Mexican-American War, as well as sections about prairie life. Most of the sources on the website are primary sources, like the Mexican-American War has 129 primary sources about the war, and the Mark Twain's Mississippi has 120. These sources can be searched by author, title, or year, and can be browsed to find appropriate ones for students. The website concentrates in Illinois's involvement in history, but does address world events. For example, the information on the Mexican-American War is broad enough to teach it anywhere, but it does have a specific section devoted to the role that Illinois played.

My favorite part of the website is the section Illinois Civil War Newspapers. It has 1469 newspaper articles about the Civil War that can be navigated. All of the papers are written by Illinois Newspapers, but cover more than just what occurred in Illinois. I think this site would be very helpful in making a unit about the Civil War, because there are newspaper articles that cover the entire stretch of the war. It is also useful, because with such a large variety, it would be possible to find suitable ones for every reading level.

Encyclopedia

http://www.encyclopedia.com/

I would recommend this website to a colleague or student because it is an excellent, credible and versatile resource. The range of topics covered in the Encyclopedia is extensive and the information is reliable and gathered from over 100 trustworthy websites. It can be utilized as a quick and accessible references during instruction or discussion because it is easily navigated by the search bar on the home page. It is straight-forward enough for students to interact with easily and could to be listed as a possible starting point for students to begin research for class activities. The site is also enriched by a web of external links throughout the articles that continue the exploration on the subject. Many of the articles are clustered together to form groups of relevant materials. This aspect of the website could be particularly useful for teachers when they begin planning units and want to gather a wealth of information. Some of the grouping may be interesting as self-contained lessons because they offer controversial and interdisciplinary topics.

Civil War Traveler

http://civilwartraveler.com/


I found a website called civilwartraveler.com, and I think it would be a great tool for social studies teachers. Every teacher finds it hard to really capture what the Civil War was like to students, and this website offers a lot different views and sources to engage students. It has links of all the different eastern, western, and west of the Mississippi. If you click on each state link it gives you a brief profile on the states during the Civil War. Each state link has maps of Civil War trails, different primary sources, and historical information. These trails actually map out actual battles throughout the war, and one trail map covers Lee's retreat at the end of the war. There is a diverse multimedia link on the page, which offers different podcasts, maps, and videos about the Civil War. This website can be used in social studies classroom and for many individual or group projects. Students will be able to interact and see the actual trails and battle grounds where the battles, retreats, and soldier camps were. The site offers civil war battlefields and historical sites in about 28 different maps, real life events for field trips (depending on which state you teach in), reenactment schedules, podcasts, travel blogs, and e-newsletters that teachers can utilize in the classroom. Social Studies teachers can you this website as a creditable. Teachers can use different maps, podcasts, trails, letters, and other primary sources to create incredible and educational lesson plans for students.