Over more than 15 years, Rocky Gap High School of Rocky Gap, VA, has offered students the opportunity to participate in a history and technology project. While working on the project, students conduct oral history interviews, and archive these interviews and related photographs in a database and, in many cases, online.

The main page can be somewhat difficult to navigate. However, the largest portion of content can be found under Stories of the People. This section contains roughly 90 oral history transcripts on the lives of Bland County residents. Topics range from train rides and farm life to working in a World War II aircraft factory and religious practices. Some of the transcripts are also accompanied by photographs of the interviewee throughout his or her life.

Yet other transcripts link to collection pages which bring together related oral histories, as well as narration written by students. In some cases, video and audio versions are available in addition to the text transcripts. Topics include the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), church, death practices, farming, logging, the railroad, school life, tunnel building, and Bland County residents at war.

For more information on the project and its facilities, try the links under "Mountain Home Project."

This website is excellent as inspiration for beginning your own local history projects, as well as a fantastic resource for anyone looking for information on life in rural Virginia.

Note: The site is frequently unavailable for short bursts of time. Try again later if you reach a 404 error page.

iCivics teaches students civics by way of online casual gaming. Don't write the site off because it consists primarily of games. Most of them are actually both entertaining and educational.

Games are divided into sections—Citizen Participation, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Budgeting, Separation of Powers, the Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch, with one to four games each. Games can also be sorted by overall time needed to play.

Try Cast Your Vote to learn to prioritize issues of importance to you and evaluate political candidates, Immigration Nation to learn reasons why people are and are not allowed into the country, Do I Have a Right? to review your amendments, Branches of Power to emphasize the relationships among the three branches of government, Executive Command to discover the responsibilities of the President, People's Pie to create a national budget, or Counties Work to manage county services. For an in-depth example, take a look at our Tech for Teachers entry on Do I Have a Right?.

Note that games include teacher's guides in the menu below the play area. Select Teachers' Tools, and look under Teacher's Files. Also under Teachers' Tools, you can search by your state name to find any standards directly related to the game in question.

Players can also earn points, and spend them on various causes such as Teens Against Domestic Abuse. The causes with the highest points each three months are awarded a monetary prize. This gives gaming point acquisition a real-life application.

In addition to games, the website offers curriculum units on budgeting, foundations of government, citizenship and participation, persuasive writing, and each of the three branches of government. These packages include lesson plans, appropriate iCivics games, and webquests. Webquests consist of thematic information linked to resources on external websites. You can also search for appropriate content by specific state standards, and/or register to create a class account.

Yale University has made a sampling of their courses available for listeners, viewers, and readers.

As of writing, the history subsection contains six courses—two of which relate directly to U.S. history ("The American Revolution" and "The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877") and one which touches on relevant issues, "Epidemics and Western Society Since 1600." Each of these courses offers links to individual pages for each lecture. Lecture pages contain short text overviews of the topic at hand; a list of any reading which was required for the day; and links to lecture audio, video, and transcriptions.

Our site links you directly to the Yale's history courses. However, consider exploring other topics as well. Maybe a lecture on Roman architecture will give you background for discussing monuments in Washington, DC, or an economics course will give you a new way of thinking about the American Revolution. Interdisciplinary possibilities are endless.

The Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) hosts more than 1,000 streaming videos about Texas, shot by Texans, or created in Texas. Users who have appropriate footage, including home videos, can have their films digitized and added to the collection free of charge.

Of the four main navigational buttons, the one to pay attention to is "Teach Texas." This opens a page leading to lesson plans; information on how to implement TAMI resources in the classroom; collection browsing options; and "Documenting History," a documentary-making activity.

Lesson plans can be browsed by grade level, starting with a K-3 category, or by general topic. Specific topics covered include the 1900 Galveston hurricane; 20th-century business; oil; Japanese, Italian, and German internment in World War II; festivals; cattle; the Dust Bowl; the aerospace industry; Lyndon B. Johnson and civil rights; the Vietnam War; the World War II home front; and Gulf Coast hurricanes. Lesson plans are structured, offering, for example, objectives; lists of useful prior knowledge and/or activities to engage said knowledge; hooks; the activity itself, including films to watch, questions to address, and readings to complete; worksheets; resources; and lists of Texas state standards.

Using Archival Film in the Classroom holds best practice suggestions for preparation prior to class, in class (before, during, and after a film viewing), and further resources on using film to teach.

Documenting History is a multi-day lesson plan, which culminates in group documentaries discussing local people, events, or items. While the idea is to collect Texas history, the plan can easily be implemented elsewhere without the possibility of adding the videos to the TAMI. In addition, the plan includes information on free video editing software, so, while there are equipment requirements, you do not need your school to possess expensive editing software to put the plan into action.

Finally, Curated Collections offers video sets on home movies, Lyndon B. Johnson, Austin television, local films, Texas and the Vietnam War, Speakers of the Texas House of Representatives, and the U.S.-Mexico frontier.