This website makes U.S Census data accessible to K-12 social studies students through 20 classroom activities. Divided by grade-level, these activities trace change over time in the United States using statistics. Activities address civil rights, continental expansion, the treatment of Native Americans, immigration, and other topics related to demographic change.

With schools placing a greater emphasis on the STEM fields, these activities are helpful for social studies teachers who are trying to make cross-curricular connections. Each activity requires students to analyze data to draw conclusions, clearly demonstrating how teachers can use non-textual primary sources to encourage historical thinking in the classroom.

These activities are also very clear about which standards (Common Core and UCLA National Standards for History), skills, and level of Bloom’s Taxonomy they address. However, it would be helpful if it were possible to search activities based on at least one of these categories, rather than by grade range only. Nevertheless, a well-designed website with well-written activities for thinking historically with diverse types of sources.

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.

Dedicated to making documents available concerning the Chickasaw Indian Nation—originally located in the South but removed in the 1830s to Oklahoma territory. This site, created by a member of the Chickasaw Indian Nation, contains a collection of more than 130 letters written by, to, or about the Chickasaw between 1792 and 1849; the texts of more than 30 treaties; and more than 25 additional documents such as tribal rolls, census information, government records, and Bible entries.

Includes a link to the author's other site Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory: 1837-1907, that contains a 650-word essay on Chickasaw Nation History and links to more than 15 additional sites pertaining to the Chickasaw and resources on more general Native American subjects.

Provides vote counts for nominees in all federal elections from 1920 to 2000. These counts were compiled from official sources in states and territories and published by the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The statistics for elections prior to 1992 are available as scanned images of published documents in PDF format; results from elections held in 1992 and after are offered in HTML in addition to PDF format. Valuable for those studying 20th-century U.S. political history.

Provides statistics on all U.S. presidential elections. For each election year, the site presents graphs showing popular and electoral votes, maps of states won by each candidate, vote count and voter turnout statistics, and a sketchy essay of approximately 100 words in length on campaign issues. Offers more extensive information on the 2000 election: official certified results; polling data by five organizations from August through October 2000; biographical statements of 300-600 words each on candidates George W. Bush,Al Gore, and Ralph Nader (the Bush bio, almost twice the length of the others, reads as if it was written by his campaign organization); a chronology of events following the election until Gore's concession; and the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision, concurrence by Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissents by Justices Breyer, Souter, and Stevens, and oral arguments. Also includes an essay of 900 words on close and disputed elections, with links to "quick facts" about the candidates involved; an essay of 600 words about the reasons that the electoral college was created, with a link to Federalist Paper No. 68 by Alexander Hamilton, which offers a rationale for the institution; and a 15-minute multimedia history of the Supreme Court. MultiEducators of New Rochelle, NY produces multimedia software on historical subjects; graphs and texts in this site have been taken from their American History CD-Rom. A useful source for statistics on presidential elections, but marred by intrusive flashing ads.

This subscription-only website presents an extensive archive of U.S. history documents, offering roughly 6,300 publications. The archive provides access to every Congressional and Executive document of the first 14 U.S. Congresses, and additional coverage through the 25th Congress, as well as tables, maps, charts, and other illustrations. The collection is particularly strong in military history, with 205 documents about military bases and posts and 134 on military construction. Other documents address topics such as westward expansion, Native American affairs, and issues surrounding slavery. This collection also includes numerous speeches and messages by Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

Users can browse the archive by category: Subjects, Publication Category, Standing-Committee Author, Document Class, and Congress. Simple and advanced searches are available, enabling easy access into this large collection of documents. For those with access, this site is a valuable resource for researching the government and military in the early United States.

Presenting 325 probate inventories, this website provides a unique window into daily life in Virginia and Maryland between 1740 and 1810. In this time period, county courts appointed appraisers, local men, to visit an estate after its owner died, list what was there, and estimate its value. These listings, called probate records or inventories, can be analyzed to illuminate a family's routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as a region's economy and connection to larger markets. These inventories are a sample from the region at this time, picked to be representative of the furnishings in George Mason's Gunston Hall. They are all digitized, transcribed, and searchable.

For a general overview, the inventories can be browsed by decade and county—including York, Norfolk, Richmond, and Fairfax counties in Virginia. For more detailed information on the role of material culture in colonial life, the site's Interpreting section presents interviews with two scholars who use probate records to discuss topics such as slavery and slave life, credit and debt, and women and property ownership. Three detailed lesson plans, written by Virginia teachers, are also available, providing suggestions for incorporating these rich sources into classroom learning.

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.

If you're looking for information on Alabama, you've found a good place to start. This website is a compilation of informative articles on the state of Alabama—current and historical information.

To access the articles, you can choose a category subset (agriculture, arts and literature, business and industry, education, folklife, geography and environment, government and politics, history, peoples, religion, science and technology, or sports and recreation), and browse. Another option is to select "indexes" from the main menu, and then choose another means of browsing (titles, authors, people, places, events, or organizations). As of the time of writing, the encyclopedia offers 1,400 entries, and new articles are added weekly.

Other sections worth exploring on the site include "features" which groups together articles on Alabama musicians and "galleries" where you can find image collections of John Kelly Fitzpatrick and Dale Kennington's paintings, photos by Erik Overbey and Mary Morgan Keipp, Magnolia Cemetery, the Ava Maria Grotto, folk pottery, barbecue, and far more.

Don't forget to explore the Beta version of the For Teacher's Section. Here, you will discover a wide variety of articles organized in accordance with Alabama teaching standards.