National History Education Resources
National History Education Clearinghouse
The goal of this organization is to help K-12 teachers access high-quality materials and resources that are available online to enhance the teaching of American History. Their website brings together useful and up-to-date professional development and online resources from organizations around the county. The site also includes a customized search feature called the History Gateway, which filters searches to include .edu, .gov and .org sites.
National Council for the Social Studies
The mission of this leading professional organization for the Social Studies is to provide leadership, serve and support to all social studies educators. It publishes the process-oriented Curriculum Standards for Social Studies and the peer-reviewed journal, Social Education. In addition, they publish articles and white papers on important issues and methods in History Education.
National Center for History in the Schools
This UCLA-base organization specializes in connecting teachers with historians through publications, professional development and community engagement. Working with classroom teachers, curriculum directors, historians, public interest groups and parents, the NCHS developed the content-rich National Standards for History, which are available online. World History for Us All is a free online curriculum that draws on academic research into looking at world history from cross-cultural, comparative and global perspectives, connecting activities and documents to an overarching set of guiding historical concepts, objectives and themes.
Springfield Armory National Historic Site
Begun as a major arsenal under the authority of General George Washington early in the Revolutionary War, the first national armory began manufacturing muskets in 1794. Within decades, Springfield Armory had perfected pioneering manufacturing methods that were critical to American industrialization. The Armory ceased manufacturing in 1968, and was reopened in 1978 as a National Historic Site under the administration of the National Park Service. The Forge of Innovation site tells the history of this historic site and includes interactive activities and curricula for elementary, middle and high school classrooms.
Disability History Museum
Social struggles of many kinds—civil rights, labor issues, suffrage, immigration and assimilation, the provision of health care for all—make it clear that history is useful for understanding the experiences and problems we encounter in the present. The Disability History Museum aims to provide all site visitors, people with and without disabilities, researchers, teachers and students, with a wide array of tools to help deepen their understanding of human variation and difference, and to expand appreciation of how vital to our common life the experiences of people with disabilities have always been. Through their website, the DHM provides a large library of resources relating to disability history as well as lesson plans developed by classroom teachers to integrate topics in disability history with larger themes addressed in secondary and higher education course work in U.S. History, American Studies, Civics, Government, and Law.
Stanford History Education Group
There are a number of excellent resources available from the different programs that fall under the SHEG umbrella, including:
This website grew out of a collaboration with SHEG and George Mason University. Lessons present digital resources on a variety of historical events from American History and students are guided through the historical thinking process that scholars engage in when examining the same material.
Reading Like a Historian
This set of curricula is designed to engage students in historical thinking by focusing on a central question, then guiding students through a set of primary sources that are selected for students with a diverse set of skills.
Historic Northampton
This museum of local history is located in Northampton, Massachusetts. Through partnerships with local scholars and educational institutions, Historic Northampton has produced a number of online exhibits that focus on a local story with close connections to nationally important events. The Goody Parsons Witchcraft Case: A Journey to 17th Century Northampton online exhibit gives insight into colonial American life and social conventions by following the story of a local woman accused of witchcraft.
