PBS Origins is a YouTube channel featuring short and medium-length videos that cover various historical moments and subjects, which may not find their way into the traditional classroom. The channel would be a great addition to the classroom to deepen students’ understanding and connection to the past. There are five shows hosted on this YouTube channel: Rogue History, In the Margins, A People’s History of Native America, Origin of Everything, and Historian’s Take. Each of the five shows has a different purpose. Rogue History provides “fresh perspectives about outlaws, outcasts, and rogues,” In The Margins explores “obscure tales that offer unique insights,” A People's History of Native America takes a present-to-past approach to explain current issues faced by Indigenous peoples today and their historical context, Origin of Everything seeks to challenge assumptions by highlighting “about under-told history and culture,” and Historian’s Take provides historical analysis of the impact of moments of media. 

These five shows offer a wealth of videos to fit into instructions throughout the year for high school students. Videos like those titled “The Founding Father They Don’t Teach You About” and “Traitor or Hero? The Black Musician Who Spied on His Own Community” offer more complexity in many historical events.  The Founding Father takes the events of the Revolutionary War away from the white men of the Founding generation. Traitor or Hero denies a simple black-and-white understanding of Walter Loving’s story. Other videos like “The Disturbing History of America’s Highways” connect present conditions of America to its historical context and impact on past and present communities. Videos like The Disturbing History of America’s Highways encourage students to see the past beyond memorization of names and dates and form a personal connection to the past. 

Additionally, videos like Traitor or Hero can be used as lessons in historical thinking. Students can watch the video and, as a class, debate if they think Walter Loving should be seen as a hero, a traitor, or neither, then defend their view. A discussion can follow the debate on how the students’ differing perceptions of the same story do not change what Walter Loving did but do inform how they engaged with his story. Another possible classroom activity would be to take one of the shorts on the channel and research the topic further. This research activity can include students independently finding the primary sources shown in the video and reporting additional information they find to the class. Researching the video’s topic as a class demonstrates, with a practical example, how to confidently research a topic discovered in a social media context. With a greater number of the public getting their information and news passively through social media, teaching students to be active in their engagement is a critical step to being informed citizens of tomorrow. 

Just as Crash Course has found itself as a valuable resource for the classroom, PBS Origins can be too. PBS Origins provides additional coverage to Crash Course’s own pool of videos. These shows can be used to deepen and complicate the coverage of units to include representation of communities outside white people and men. PBS Origins has the added benefit of a diverse set of narrators filling the role of historian, showing that anyone can create and tell history. If Crash Course has proven valuable, check out PBS Origins. 

The Freedom site is a creation of the Library of Congress, whose mission is to “engage, inspire, and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity”. The Freedom site, focused on showing the story of the Black civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, is based on sources within the Library of Congress’ holdings. To tell this story, starting with Emmett Till and ending with the march to Montgomery, Alabama, is a powerful demonstration of the power of the people. This approach to the site fits into the Library of Congress’ mission to not only educate but also inspire the American people. 

This site was not developed specifically to be used as a classroom resource; however, the primary sources and interviews pulled together for this project can be utilized by teachers for their Civil Rights Movement unit. While the scope of the project does not deal with all the complexities of this period, it does effectively show the user how recent these events were by including taped oral histories. The site’s coverage is also ample for the K-12 classroom and does complement the traditional classroom approach by emphasizing the proximity of the events to the students. 

While there are no interactive components to the site, the images and oral histories are fantastic starting points for conversations within the classroom. The text can be used to guide the conversation for both the teacher and students. One possible activity for older students could be to watch the CBS News Eyewitness clip from 1962 and the account from Dr. William Anderson, then have the students reflect on both within a class discussion. Answering questions such as “What does it show that teenagers are doing this?”, “How do they present themselves?”, “What impression do you get about their character?”, “How are they talking about the movement in the news clip versus Dr. William Anderson and the questions the interviewers want answered?”. These questions are to prompt the students to consider the messaging and crafting of a story during and after such events and how it can shape the bystanders’ perception, both in the moment and afterwards. 

For classroom use, the biggest weakness is the lack of interactive elements. The scope is appropriate for primary education, and the site can start interesting conversations amongst the students and a deeper appreciation for the cost paid during the Civil Rights Movement. A bonus is that the text does not shy away from discussing the racial tensions and harm that drove actions during the 1950s and ‘60s. Teachers might have students compare how these events are covered on the Freedom site versus their textbooks and assess which they think makes the most compelling argument.  

The separation of the Black Civil Rights movement from the others and limiting it to the actions of the 1950s and ‘60s provides flexibility for the teachers to include additional civil rights movements. For example, a teacher can show similar tactics being adopted later by disabled and Queer activists of the 1960s and ‘70s. Connecting the information in the Freedom site to other movements can deepen students’ understanding of how they can exercise their voices as citizens, how communities they may be a part of did so too, and the wider impact of the work done by the Black community during this time.

Offering a new way of looking at the history of American culture and society, Race and Ethnicity in Advertising is a database of advertisements from across the United States throughout the 20th century.  This site offers a fresh lense for students to explore the changes in how Americans view themselves and each other in the world through the familiar medium of commercials and advertisements. 

Visitors to the site can explore the posters, videos, and images in three different ways.  With over 100 hundred pages of materials, every page offers diverse ads to analyze from the late 19th century through the early 21st century.  The option to browse by collection focuses on specific topics for analysis, such as Asian American representation and celebrity endorsement advertisements.  Browsing by essay is a function that highlights themes such as gender, stereotypes, and cultural transformation using adverts from different periods to demonstrate continuing trends.

The site is friendly to students of all ages with the background and contextual information provided for every advertisement.  Each item offers key information for students to place the ad within its historical context by providing the title, date, racial/ ethnic markers, and primary time period.  The Keywords and Context section also provides clarifying information that would assist students while evaluating sources or be a great way to introduce a new topic in the classroom.  

The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) has updated its site to include interdisciplinary classroom activities that highlight a diverse set of topics relating to both World War I and World War II. ABMC manages permanent U.S. military cemeteries, memorials, and monuments within the United States and abroad. The lesson plans are geared for grades 6-12 and offer different levels of challenge, adaptations, and methods for extension.

“Horace Pippin: The Artist of No Man’s Land” introduces students to the experience of an African American soldier in World War I and how he used writing and painting to explain what he saw. “Tweeting the Air War Against the Nazis” employs technology to help students understand the role the Allied Air Forces played in the Normandy invasion.

Additionally, the user can search for lessons by grade level and subject: grades 6-8 or 9-12, Art, Art History, ELL, Journalism, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Special Education. The lesson plans provide teachers with detailed teacher tips including links to interactive maps, primary sources, timelines, and videos.

One of the new features is “Teacher Voice” pieces on some activities. These provide a teacher’s feedback on their experience with teaching the activity in their classroom and include suggestions for adapting the activity according to time restraints or specific classroom needs. There is also a backpack feature that allows the user to bookmark items.

Fallen Hero profiles detail the experiences of individual service members during World War II. Teachers and students can view eulogy videos and primary sources on each individual’s profile page. Teachers can use collections of primary sources provided onsite to help their students visualize the war and the lives of their servicemen.

For Us the Living is a resource for teachers that engages high school students through online primary-source based learning modules. Produced for the National Cemetery Administration's Veterans Legacy Program, this site tells stories of men and women buried in Alexandria National Cemetery, and helps students connect these stories to larger themes in American history. Primary sources used include photographs, maps, legislation, diaries, letters, and video interviews with scholars.

The site offers five modules for teachers to choose from, the first of which serves as an introduction to the cemetery's history. The other four cover topics such as: African American soldiers and a Civil War era protest for equal rights, the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination, commemoration of Confederates during Reconstruction, and recognition of women for their military service. Most of the modules focus on the cemetery’s early history (founded in 1862) although two modules reach into the post-war era. Each module is presented as a mystery to solve, a question to answer, or a puzzle to unravel. Students must use historical and critical thinking skills to  uncover each story. Each module ends with two optional digital activities, a historical inquiry assignment and a service-learning project, related to the module theme.

Teachers should first visit the “Teach” section which allows them to preview each module (including its primary sources, questions and activities), learn how to get started, and see how the site’s modules connect with curriculum standards. In order to access the modules for classroom use, teachers do have to create their own account, but the sign up process is fast, easy, and best of all, free! The account allows teachers to set up multiple classes, choose specific module(s) for each class, assign due dates, and view student submissions.

Part of a larger project involving 4 million pages of St. Louis court records dating between 1804 and 1875, this website was designed to preserve and make accessible the freedom lawsuits filed in the St. Louis Circuit Court. In January 2001, the freedom suits brought by Dred Scott and his wife Harriet in 1846 became the first cases to go online. There are now more than 280 freedom suits are available. These case files consist of legal petitions for freedom by people of color originally filed in St. Louis courts between 1814 and 1860. They make up the largest corpus of freedom suits currently available to researchers in the United States. The images of original handwritten documents in which black men, women, and children petitioned the courts for freedom offers a glimpse at what some argue was the beginning of America's civil rights movement.

The short Macromedia Flash film "Freedom Suits" offers a glimpse into the pursuit of freedom by African Americans in St. Louis during the 19th century. This online archive will help researchers understand the length of enslaved African American's struggles and the historical significance of the lawsuits.

In October 2015, the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation launched the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) Online Reading Room, providing streaming access to nearly 10,000 public television and radio programs from the past 60 years. The entire AAPB collection of more than 68,000 files – approximately 40,000 hours of programming – is available for viewing and listening on-site at the Library of Congress and WGBH.

The collection contains thousands of nationally-oriented programs. The vast majority of this initial content, however, consists of regional, state, and local programs selected by more than 100 stations and archives across the U.S. that document American communities during the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. The collection includes news and public affairs programs, local history productions, and programs dealing with education, science, music, art, literature, dance, poetry, environmental issues, religion, and even filmmaking on a local level.

The site also provides three curated exhibits of broadcasts pertaining to the southern civil rights movement, climate change, and individual station histories.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) serves as a portal to the digital collections of more then 40 state, regional, and online-only libraries, museums, archives, and other cultural institutions. Created to strengthen access to public resources and to "create novel environments for learning, tools for discovery, and engaging apps," the DPLA is an invaluable first stop for teachers and students looking for primary sources, particularly regional history sources.

Visitors to the website can search the more than 4,500,000 objects in the collections of participating institutions using keywords, returning results they can filter by format, owning institution, partner, date, language, location, and subject. Clicking on an object brings up detailed metadata, including creator, date of creation, and a description of the object, as well as a link to its original location online. Visitors who create a free account can save their search results, make them private or public, and share them via Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Visitors can also browse objects on a map or timeline—a fantastic way to prompt thinking about how primary sources are located in time and space. The timeline stretches from 1000 BCE to the present. (Note that zooming into the map returns finer results.) In addition, more than eight virtual exhibits demonstrate how DPLA sources can be curated to tell stories about themes and events.

The DPLA's API (application programming interface) allows visitors with the know-how to create apps drawing on the DPLA's collections. An eclectic set of more than 10 apps lets visitors browse DPLA's search results as a "river of images," discover primary sources related to their Zotero bibliographies, and more.

A fantastic starting point for anyone looking for primary sources, teachers can feel confident pointing students towards the DPLA to begin research projects or turning to the DPLA themselves to find resources to support lesson plans.

This website provides a light introduction to the history of Prohibition in the United States, reinforced with videos and images from the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary from PBS. The website showcases a photo gallery and biographies on figures from the time period paired with clips from the full-length documentary. The website also includes a map and timeline function for visualizing Prohibition efforts across space and time, as well as more than 10 lesson plans and activity resources for educators.

The website is relatively easy to navigate. The photo gallery contains more than 70 images of individuals, newspaper articles, and events, coupled with brief descriptions. More than 30 brief videos, pulled from the larger documentary, are scattered throughout the website. (Note: the video content is not transcribed or captioned.) Another useful feature may be the map, which enables visitors to get a sense of the geographical relationship of events and figures, or the timeline, which visualizes the sequence of events. Students may also be encouraged to examine one of the more than 20 biographies: brief descriptions paired with videos that provide a more in-depth discussion of the individual.

Educators should direct their attention to the For Educators section. This page provides access to four prepared lesson plans and nine quick "snapshot activities" intended to work in conjunction with website and documentary materials. These activities can be modified and integrated into larger units in coursework on these subjects. Given the graphic nature of some photos on the site and the available subject content, teachers may want to reserve the website for students grades eight and higher.

This website is a detailed look at the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956 as covered in the Montgomery Advertiser. It includes more than 20 oral histories, more than 40 archival news stories, and more than 20 images of the event. A 3,000-word overview section provides details regarding the boycott, the people involved, why it occurred, and the outcome. A biography section includes more details regarding the individuals involved with the boycott. A memorial page for Rosa Parks, one of the most visible figures of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, includes photos, videos, and news articles from the Montgomery Advertiser regarding her death. "Voices of the Boycott" includes oral histories from the participants of the boycott.

The site also includes an archive of stories from the Montgomery Advertiser and the Associated Press regarding the boycott. This includes front page stories, as well as smaller news stories from within the newspaper. Finally a photo gallery contains booking photos, images of speeches, and photos of the events. None of the images in the gallery are graphic in nature.

Though the site is very user-friendly and all information easily accessible, it is somewhat limited in its focus on primary sources directly tied to the Montgomery Advertiser. Still, this website could potentially be useful for educators and students looking to supplement their studies on the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, especially due to the inclusion of the oral histories.