Four guided investigations designed to teach students how to read primary sources and construct historical narratives lie at the heart of this website. Topics are: the Spanish-American War, the Scopes Trial, Social Security, and Rosa Parks. Each topic includes a short introductory video, a timeline of events, a central question, and extension activities. For example, the Rosa Parks investigation poses the question: "Why did the boycott of Montgomery's buses succeed?"

After completing a simple login, students read annotated documents—including letters written by the boycott organizers, a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and an interview with a woman working in Montgomery—and answer guiding questions, and draw on their responses to answer the question. The website also includes a useful introduction to the idea of historical thinking.

Especially since the 1950s, civil rights litigation has done much to influence government institutions. This website presents at least partial information on 2,243 injunctive civil rights cases (those seeking policy change and not money). These cases are divided by category. "Jail Conditions" and "Prison Conditions" contain the most cases, with roughly 550 each. "Immigration" and "Juvenile Institutions" also include more than 150 each. Other categories include: "Mental Health Institutions," "Mental Retardation Institutions," "Child Welfare," "Nursing Home Cases," "Policing Cases," "Public Housing," "Equal Employment," and "School Desegregation," among others.

A good place to begin is the "Featured Cases" section on the website's homepage, which highlights cases from the collection that are being litigated currently and/or that are particularly relevant to current events. Cases are fully searchable by name, type, issue, district, circuit, state, causes of action, attorney organization, and people involved in the case. In addition, links to 141 case studies written by law students, professors, journalists, and policy advocates provide in-depth information on a specific case or issue, such as the Urban Institute's "Baseline Assessment of Public Housing Desegregation Cases." New material is added regularly.

H. P. N. Gammel's 10-volume compilation The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 is available in PDF format on this site, providing more than 16,500 pages of historical legal documents. Includes early colonization laws and constitutions, proceedings from constitutional conventions, and all laws and resolutions passed from every congressional and legislative session from statehood to 1897. Users may browse each volume or an analytical index of the whole work, or take advantage of a search engine that allows keyword searching. Includes six links to related sites.

Valuable for those conducting research into 19th-century Texas history or legal history.

Don't let Guam be forgotten in your classroom! After all, it is one of only 16 non-self-governing territories worldwide that are recognized by the UN. As such, leaving Guam out of history is to ignore a rather remarkable political exception.

Guampedia offers a range of short articles on everything from architecture to World War II. These pages also feature relevant photographs and further resource listings. Additional sections offer basic facts on Guam (motto, population, etc.) and its major villages. Be sure to check out the history lesson plans to see if there's any ready-made content appropriate for you to introduce to your classroom.

Additional ways to explore include a selection of media collections including photographs, illustrations, soundbites, and video; MARC Publications, including issues of the Guam Recorder, lectures, and additional e-publications on topics such as archaeology and stonework; and traditional recipes.

This website offers opportunities for teachers and students to explore the Bill of Rights in a multitude of ways and includes information about educational opportunities for students and teachers in addition to their online content. (The institute puts on Constitutional seminars for teachers as well as a Constitution Academy and essay contest for students.)

On the website itself teachers will find information on Constitution Day, more than 90 lesson plans which incorporate the Bill of Rights, daily news headlines relating to the Bill of Rights, and one-to-three sentence summaries of more than 150 Supreme Court cases in 15 different thematic categories such as freedom of speech, federalism, and freedom of the press. The Supreme Court case feature is especially useful if you are looking for a brief description of the case and its central issues.

The site is very easy to navigate and the Institute has clearly made an effort to streamline the search for information. One particular example of this is the Americapedia. This resource allows teachers and students to find identifications and definitions for people and words commonly associated with the study of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The Americapedia is organized into five categories—Civic Values, The Constitution, Documents, Landmark Supreme Court Cases, and People—with 15–60 definitions in each section.

Another area of this site clearly designed for ease of use is the primary documents section. In this section you will find 11 foundational primary source documents in addition to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other amendments. Such a short list of documents means finding relevant information quickly, but some may find this section quite limited if doing in-depth research.

Finally, for teachers and students looking for a little variety in their study of the Bill of Rights, this site offers some interactive games. While the “Life Without the Bill of Rights?” and “Constitution Duel Quiz” games could be good for lesson introduction or class discussion, the “Madison’s Notes are Missing” game offers an opportunity for more in-depth student inquiry and requires interaction beyond just the click of a mouse.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Seth Swihart wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

These historical materials come from 15 Kentucky colleges, universities, libraries, and historical societies. There are nearly 8,000 photographs; 95 full-text books, manuscripts, and journals from 1784 to 1971; 94 oral histories; 78 issues of Mountain Life and Work from 1925-62; and 22 issues of Works Progress Administration in Kentucky: Narrative Reports.

Photographs include collections by Russell Lee, who documented health conditions resulting from coal industry practices; Roy Stryker, head of the New Deal Farm Security Administration photographic section; and others that provide images of cities, towns, schools, camps, and disappearing cultures. Oral histories address Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed, Senator John Sherman Cooper, the Frontier Nursing Service, veterans, fiddlers, and the transition from farming to an industrial economy. Texts include Civil War diaries, religious tracts, speeches, correspondence, and scrapbooks. Documents cover a range of topics, including colonization societies, civil rights, education, railroads, feuding, the Kentucky Derby, Daniel Boone, and a personal recollection of Abraham Lincoln.