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.

Throughout the Ages was created to meet the primary source needs of New York state K-6 history teachers. The site collection includes more than 500 photographs, letters, paintings, advertisements, and maps.

To navigate the site, choose an area of interest and subtopic (for example "leisure" under the heading "community"), and scroll to a source of interest. The source will offer a caption. In some cases, historical context, focus questions, and the correlating New York state standards will also be listed. Be sure to click on each of these section titles, as items such as resources and historical background only display once selected.

One feature to look into is the automatic handout maker. For each image, you can automatically generate a handout by selecting any or all of the following categories: caption, historical background, standards/key ideas, historical challenge, interdisciplinary connections, and resources. For some images, these will already be filled out. For others, you can type anything you want for all, some, or one of those categories. Don't worry about deleting existing text if you don't want it on your handout. It will be back the next time you load your page.

For the Court of States exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce prepared a collection of albums containing more than 3,000 photographs on "twelve aspects of Virginia life: scenic tours; recreation; historic homes; culture; history; colonial archaeology; scenery and natural wonders; physiography; agriculture; education; government and the people; and industry, commerce, and transportation." These photographs are accessible according to 10 Library of Congress subject headings: geographic location, personal name, building name, historic subjects, and keywords appearing in bibliographic records. Useful for those interested in Virginia history or studying practices of historical memory.

An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.