This site contains more than 10,000 documents and monographs from the Civil War era, including roughly 6,000 monographs from the Elden E. Josh Billings Collection. The site also contains transcriptions of Union and Confederate soldiers' letters and diaries, homefront letters, memoirs, and contemporary research files drawn from 19 collections. Each document group is accompanied by a 300-word biography of the principal author(s), a 150-word description of the scope and content of the collection, a 75-word account of the provenance, and a list of the collection's contents organized chronologically, with a roughly 15-word description of each item.

The site also includes links to nine online Virginia Tech theses and dissertations on Civil War topics as well as a guide to other Special Collections Civil War sources. This site is ideal for researching the lives of Civil War soldiers and the homefront during the Civil War.

The USS Constitution Museum developed All Hands on Deck as a means of introducing K–12 educational elements across subjects (math, art, and more) using the history of one of the United States' most renowned military vessels, the USS Constitution.

The website itself is somewhat disorganized. However, there are a plethora of lesson plans embedded within it for students of any grade level.

The available lessons are divided into five sections—preview activities (to determine pre-existing knowledge), the building of early U.S. military frigates, the War of 1812 and the Barbary Wars, 1800s life aboard a warship, and the lasting legacy of the USS Constitution. These sections have subsections, within which you can find individual lessons intended for grades K–4, 5–8, and 9–12. Alternatively, visiting "How to Use This Online Curriculum" includes a linked list of states. Clicking on any of the available states—IL, MD, WA, SC, TN, MO, TX, NM, CO, MT, and VA—offers a list of the activities available on the website which correlate with state standards. The individual subsections also include recommended field trip sites, films, books, games, music, and more; as well as anecdotes, literature, and other "grab bag" additional items of interest.

The Image Gallery offers a smattering of paintings, illustrations, and photographs of the vessel and its officers. The gallery also contains a single newspaper recruitment ad dating to 1798.

Educators who would prefer a tangible copy of the curriculum can send an electronic request.

Alternatively, you may want to brush up on your USS Constitution history yourself. In that case, the website offers a 19-minute video in which a young girl meets a variety of figures aboard the ship—a captain's wife, a powder monkey, and an African American sailor among them.

Images of more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in newspapers and magazines in the United States from 1911 to 1955 appear on this well-developed site. The material is drawn from a collection of one of the oldest and largest advertising agencies, the J. Walter Thompson Company.

Advertisements are divided into five main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and programs); television (including television sets and programs); transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); beauty and hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government-related, such as V-mail and bond drives). Ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context. "About Ad Access" furnishes an overview of advertising history, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories.

A Sailor's Life for Me! is a superb example of how the web can bring history alive for young students.

The website presents an idea of what daily life would have been like aboard the famed USS Constitution, which actively fought in the Quasi War with France, the Barbary Wars, and the War of 1812. Its ability to withstand enemy fire eventually gained it the moniker of "Old Ironsides."

There are three main sections to the site, as well as supplementary materials. The primary sections are a "life of" game, an exploration of the areas aboard the vessel, and an introduction to the men who would have sailed aboard her.

Explore Old Ironsides is perhaps the most informative section. Here, the ship is divided into 24 interactive scenes which introduce shipboard activities—from battle roles, flogging, and burial to the more common activities of dining, holystoning (deck maintenance), and what sailors did with their moments of free time. Each section can be explored clicking on people and items. Clicking provides commentary from fictional sailors (complete with highlighted vocabulary terms), actions and sound effects that bring the scene to life, short biographies of historical USS Constitution sailors, and information on tasks and objects in the scenes. Life stories of the real sailors range from fairly typical naval experiences to an unfortunate sailor who wounded himself by rolling out of his hammock and down a hatch. Two remaining scenes give an idea of where and why people would sign up for voyages and the triumphant return of Old Ironsides.

These scenes provide a strong introduction to shipboard life, covering the basics in an approachable picture-book-like format. The downside is that there is enough information and detail that this portion of the site takes some time to cover in its entirety. Educators may wish to peruse the vessel sections, and select a few scenes that they feel are most important to the topic at hand. There is a seek-and-find incentive for students interested in exploring the entire ship, however, as the ship's dog, Guerriere (also the name of the most famed enemy vessel confronted by the USS Constitution) is located in 11 of the scenes.

Meet Your Shipmates introduces the crew by job and number. For example, the page shows the rank system aboard the vessel as well as how many individuals fit within each rank—from the one captain to the 276 able seamen, 55 ordinary seamen, and 12 boys. Additional roles include quartermasters, boatswain's mates, gunner's mates, the carpenter's mate, the carpenter's yeoman, the sailmaker's mate, the coxwain, the cook, the midshipmen, master's mates, the sailmaker, the carpenter, the gunner, surgeon's maters, the sailing-master, the surgeon, the chaplain, the purser, and lieutenants. Each of these sections can be clicked on for a brief description of the role of the individual(s) in question. Some roles even include a short "diary" of someone known to have served aboard the vessel—including David Debias, a free-born African American ship's boy who tragically crossed into Mississippi and was mistaken for an escaped slave.

The final main section of the site is the interactive game—the site's centerpiece. You begin the game preparing for life as a ship's boy. If students are interested in rising in the ranks, they will want to login to save their progress. Otherwise, the game can be played without registering. As a boy, you engage in tasks such as holystoning the deck, carrying powder for gun drill, and carrying slops without tripping. You are periodically confronted by superiors who ask questions that will increase and decrease your likelihood of promotion, health and happiness, spending money, and popularity with the crew. The game can be repetitive (not unlike life at sea), but may engage students who would otherwise be uninterested in the topic.

If all of the above isn't impressive enough, the site also offers family activities such as baking ship's biscuits, learning about signal flags, and testing buoyancy, as well as educator's resources. Annotated Scenes takes each of the interactive scenes discussed earlier; and provides related primary sources, artifacts, activities, videos, interactive games, and lesson plans. Classroom integration discusses how best teachers may be able to include the website content in their classroom, and explains its correlation to national standards. Lesson Plans let you search activities, lesson plans, artifacts, primary sources, games, and sailors' stories by grade level, content area, and type of resource. Selecting "Social Studies" alone provides 269 options. War of 1812 Resources discusses how to teach the war in different classroom time allotments, an overview, a timeline, a brief section on African Americans aboard the USS Constitution, and related links and suggested reading.

The only fault of this website is that its content may be a bit overwhelming. However, educators can select what is most appropriate for their students from a wealth of knowledge which often goes uncovered in history classrooms.

This collection includes primary documents about the food conservation program that took place in the United States during World War I. During this time there was great need for food in Europe for both the military as well as civilians. The U.S. Food Administration created programs to conserve food. “Meatless Tuesdays” encouraged Americans to limit their consumption. Other programs promoted the establishment of “war gardens,” small backyard kitchen gardens in which people grew their own vegetables. The collection also includes books that describe these programs and explain how to preserve and cook food.

Although the 45 sources are listed without annotations and in no particular order, the website has a solid search feature. Teachers could introduce this website by searching the word “poster” and using the images of government-created posters to start a classroom discussion on limited resources during World War I. In addition, students should be shown the use of the “display gallery view” feature when looking at their search results. This feature makes it much easier to find relevant information at a glance.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Todd Beuke wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

Shaping the Constitution revolves around the role of Virginia in early American military and political history.

The first section, Becoming Free and Independent States, offers an overview of the perspectives of early Virginians on the Revolutionary War. The page includes biographies of figures of note, ranging from George Washington to Billy, a slave impressed by the British Navy. Each biography offers titles and/or web links for further reading. The main draw of the section, though, is a collection of 32 primary sources—broadsides, portraits, maps, warrants, petitions, a cartoon, and more. Each primary source can be selected for additional information, a transcript, related sources, and/or a high-resolution copy of the source. One surprise worth noting is that selecting the high-res copy of the source sometimes provides a PDF file with multiple related sources, rather than just the one you may have thought you were downloading.

Each of the following sections follow a similar structure—biographies, primary sources, and a short text overview. Topics include Virginia and the Constitutional debate; Bill of Rights; and 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments.

An additional feature, located within the majority of the individual sections is a "For Educators" button. This button opens a list of lesson plans and their respective Virginia standards. Only the 15th and 19th Amendment portions of the site lack this option.

A laudable fact about this website is that it provides unpleasant sources (such as a photo of an Alexandria slave pen) as well as copies of major government documents. These sources are useful for showing precisely what facts of historical life various political decisions and amendments were created to change.

In the words of the exhibit website, "The World Trade Center: Rescue, Recovery, Response details the history of the World Trade Center, the September 11 attacks, the rescue efforts, the evidence recovery operation at the Fresh Kills facility, and the public response to the September 11th events."

The website is divided into five sections—The World Trade Center, Rescue, Recovery, Response, and Voices.

The World Trade Center provides a brief overview of the design process, a construction and habitation chronology, statistics on the towers (did you know 17 babies were born at the WTC and that more than 3,500 people worked on the construction site?), a small amount of information on the response to the 1993 bombing, and photographs of several damaged artifacts removed from the WTC towers. The very mundane nature of these objects— for example, floor number signs and a fire extinguisher—may make them more emotionally distressing to students. Proceed with care, but recognize that the inclusion of these artifacts can provide powerful commentary on 9/11.

Rescue shares the story of the first 24 hours following the attacks. The primary focus is on the sacrifice of responders, including 343 NYC Fire Department employees. A timeline breaks the day down into small portions—in some cases minutes—with a an image and sentence describing events. Additional subsections introduce the Engine 6 Company, provide brief remembrances of the members of the company on duty at the time of the tragedy (two of whom survived), interactive schematics and images of the Engine 6 Pumper before and after damage, a description of why the WTC towers' engineering failed, and a selection of artifacts used by rescue workers. This section includes videos in which the two Engine 6 survivors discuss their experiences. These are very emotional, clearly depict pain, and also discuss the men and women that fell from the towers. As a result, educators should take care in their decisions to share these film clips.

Recovery details efforts to recover objects, the deceased, and criminal evidence from the remains of the towers after their transportation to the Fresh Kills site. Here, visitors can find information on and images of the cleanup of Ground Zero; a brief overview of the Fresh Kills site; a to-the-point listing of the sorting process complete with images; images of airplane pieces; photographic panoramas of Fresh Kills; images of items and signs used at the Fresh Kills site; and statistics concerning the site, personnel involved, and objects found. If visitors are concerned, they should be aware there are no images of human remains.

Response addresses the myriad ways in which people responded to the events. The section contains images of newspaper front pages and images of and short introductions to the Union Square scrolls and St. Paul's Chapel memorials, St. Paul's Chapel and Nino's restaurant as places of refuge for recovery workers, and the Fulton Street viewing platform from which the recovery efforts could be watched, as well as photographs of objects and messages of support from around the world.

The final section, Voices, contains lengthy audio interview clips with Patty Clark who worked on the 65th floor of the North Tower; Lee Ielpi who sought his firefighter son; and Jim and Marilyn Geiger, who offer a married couple's perspective on the situation from both within and outside the building. These interviews include individual coping strategies and descriptions of events.

While this is a strong addition to the web content concerning 9/11, it is important to note that it may be a very difficult site for many as it brings human stories of emotional pain to the forefront.

These more than 5,500 transcribed newspaper articles related to the Mexican-American War represent five newspapers from the U.S. and England. They span the period from 1845, when the U.S. annexed Texas, through 1848, when Mexico surrendered and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed.

The contrast between coverage of the war in the U.S. and England is particularly striking. The Times of London fulminated against the immorality of slavery and of the southern scheme to annex Texas as a slave state, while exposing America's imperialist ambitions as, among other things, an attempt to shore up the nation's fragile stability through the escape valve of western migration. By contrast, newspapers from Maryland and West Virginia did not examine the issue of slavery in the articles included here.

Some images and links to watercolor and print collections are also available. The website provides a comprehensive bibliography on the war, but offers little historical background or contextualization beyond links to related materials and an expanded timeline.

Dedicated to recording the maritime history of Wisconsin (especially Lake Michigan and Lake Superior), this site features more than 7,000 documents, advertisements, and photographs of ships associated with Wisconsin waters since 1679. Geared toward the specialist as well as the beginner, the site contains a list of the more than 400 ships registered in Wisconsin over the years, as well as useful descriptions of the types of ships.

The collection is searchable by keyword and browsable. The quality of the photographs varies; some are small files, while others are quite large. The site recommends six related outside resources. This site would be very useful to anyone interested in the history of Wisconsin maritime shipping, passenger cruises, or naval history.

The Civil War in Art website offers a pictorial entry point to the Civil War. The site consists of a set of web exhibits, with text by specialists at DePaul University, as well as photographs, images of statuary, paintings, and more. The artworks and their descriptions have been contributed by a variety of Chicago-area institutions—the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago History Museum, Chicago Park District, Chicago Public Library, DuSable Museum of African Art, Newberry Library, and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Two features are worth noting. One, the broad definition of artwork adopted by the site includes documentary practices such as portrait photography and journalistic sketches. Two, the site states that the majority of the works are from Northern states. Educators should keep artists' perspectives and intended audiences in mind as they analyze images and guide students in analyzing them.

Each exhibit offers a few short pages of text, alongside selected works of art. Hover over bold names and selected words to reveal a definition or short biography. In addition, all of the artworks referenced can be accessed together on the final page of each exhibit or, for the more than 120 artworks located throughout the website, as a list under "Image Gallery." Clicking on a piece enlarges the image and presents details about the artwork's content and context, as well as a list of suggested classroom questions and further reading. Exhibits available at the time of writing cover causes of the Civil War, life in the military, emancipation and freedom, the Northern homefront, Lincoln, and remembering the Civil War.

There are three additional smaller sections. "Glossary," lists all of the vocabulary terms and short biographies available as "mouse-over" text in the exhibits. The page also offers downloadable PDFs of the vocabulary and the biographies. "Classroom Projects" offers three middle-to-high-school-level lessons, each of which has been implemented in Chicago area classrooms. Here, you can also access a file on teaching with art. Finally, "Additional Resources" provides external links for further enrichment.