Databases and Educational Gaming

• Mission US: For Crown or Colony?

  

  Let your students fill the shoes of 14-year-old printer's apprentice Nat Wheeler as tensions mount before the Boston Massacre in Mission US, "For Crown or Colony?," an NEH-funded multimedia project featuring a free, interactive educational game set in 1770s Boston, with lesson plans, and more.

  Featured Websites

  • Mission US

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • American Colonial Life in the Late 1700s: Distant Cousins
  • Background on the Patriot Attitude Toward the Monarchy
  • Boycotting Baubles of Britain
  • Colonial Broadsides and the American Revolution
  • Colonial Broadsides: A Student-Created Play
  • Common Sense: The Rhetoric of Popular Democracy
  • Declare the Causes: The Declaration of Independence
  • Midnight Ride of Paul Revere — Fact, Fiction, and Artistic License
  • Not Only Paul Revere: Other Riders of the American Revolution
  • Revolutionary Tea Parties and the Reasons for Revolution
  • Taking Up Arms and the Challenge of Slavery in the Revolutionary Era
  • The Boston Tea Party: Costume Optional?
  • The Declaration of Independence: "An Expression of the American Mind"
  • Then and Now: Life in Early America, 1740–1840
  • Voices of the American Revolution

• More Educational Gaming from NEH

  • Attack on Deerfield: On February 29, 1704, the sun rose on a chaotic scene in Deerfield, Massachusetts...
  • Laura Jernegan, Girl on a Whale Ship: In October 1868, Laura Jernegan, a 6-year-old-girl from Edgartown, Massachusetts, set out on a three-year whaling voyage with her father, mother, and brother.

   

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  Databases and Resources

  Immerse your students in primary document exploration through online databases.  Teach critical thinking skills, document analysis, and polish world language knowledge and skills. Here's a sampling... and more...

  • ARTFL: American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language, founded in 1982, provides members with access to North America's largest collection of digitized French resources
  • National Digital Newspapers Program, a partnership between the NEH and the Library of Congress, and state projects provides enhanced access to United States newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 
  • Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database -- search the Voyages database, examine estimates of the slave trade, explore the African names database here

  Featured Websites

  • Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
  • Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
  • Voyages—The Transatlantic Slave Trade

• Teenie Harris Archive

  

  Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908–1998) photographed Pittsburgh's African American community from c. 1935 to c. 1975. His archive of nearly 80,000 images is considered one of the most important documentations of 20th-century African American life. Search the archives of this NEH-funded project, follow image threads, watch a video about the artist, and enjoy using this rich resource in your classroom.

• Abraham Lincoln at the Crossroads

  Abraham Lincoln’s Crossroads is an educational game based on the NEH supported traveling exhibition Lincoln: The Constitution & the Civil War, which debuted at the National Constitution Center in June 2005. The online game is intended for advanced middle- and high-school students. It invites them to learn about Lincoln’s leadership by exploring the political choices he made. An animated Lincoln introduces a situation, asks for advice and prompts players to decide the issue for themselves, before learning the actual outcome. At the end of the game, players discover how frequently they predicted Lincoln’s actions. A Resources Page keyed to each chapter provides links to relevant Websites and EDSITEment lessson plans on Lincoln and the Civil War, permitting students to explore issues in more depth.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 1: An Early Threat of Secession: The Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Nullification Crisis
  • Lesson 1: Fragment on the Constitution and Union (1861)—The Purpose of the American Union
  • Lesson 1: On the Eve of War: North vs. South
  • Lesson 1: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of War
  • Lesson 2: From Courage to Freedom: Slavery's Dehumanizing Effects
  • Lesson 2: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Politics of Reconstruction
  • Lesson 2: The Battles of the Civil War
  • Lesson 3: A Debate Against Slavery
  • Lesson 3: Abraham Lincoln and Wartime Politics
  • Lesson 3: From Courage to Freedom
  • Lesson 3: The Gettysburg Address (1863)—Defining the American Union
  • Lesson 3: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854: Popular Sovereignty and the Political Polarization over Slavery
  • Lesson 4: Abraham Lincoln, the 1860 Election, and the Future of the American Union and Slavery
  • Lesson 4: The Second Inaugural Address (1865)—Restoring the American Union

• Encyclopedia Virginia: Battle of Manassas or Bull Run

  

  The First Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run, fought on July 21, 1861, was the first major battle of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Find out more about this event in the first and ultimate online reference work about Virginia.

• W.E.B. Du Bois & The Crisis

  When W. E. B. Du Bois founded The Crisis in 1910, as the house magazine of the fledgling NAACP, he created what is arguably the most widely read and influential periodical about race and social injustice in U.S. history. Written for educated African-American readers, the magazine reached a truly national audience within nine years, when its circulation peaked at about 100,000. In the twelve years that will be covered by the MJP edition (from 1910 to 1922), The Crisis addressed most every facet of life for blacks in America, devoting special issues to such topics as women's suffrage, education, children, labor, homes, vacations, and the war. From the start, the magazine actively promoted the arts as well, and is deservedly recognized as an important crucible for the Harlem Renaissance.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • African-American Soldiers After World War I: Had Race Relations Changed?
  • African-American Soldiers in World War I: The 92nd and 93rd Divisions
  • Birth of a Nation, the NAACP, and the Balancing of Rights
  • Lesson 1: NAACP’s Anti-Lynching Campaign in the 1920s
  • Lesson 2: NAACP's Anti-Lynching Campaign in the 1930s

• The Writings of Henry David Thoreau

  The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau provides accurate texts of Thoreau's complete works: his writings for publication, his Journal, his correspondence, and other uncollected papers as well as critical essays on his writing and research resources.

  Featured Websites

  • Thoreau Reader

• Mission US 2: Flight to Freedom

  

  Mission US is a multimedia project that immerses players in U.S. history content through free interactive games. In Mission 2: “Flight to Freedom,” players take on the role of Lucy, a 14-year-old slave in Kentucky. As they navigate her escape and journey to Ohio, they discover that life in the “free” North is dangerous and difficult. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act brings disaster.

  Featured Websites

  • Africans in America
  • Antislavery Literature Project
  • Exploring Amistad
  • Voyages—The Transatlantic Slave Trade

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • After the American Revolution: Free African Americans in the North
  • Families in Bondage
  • Lesson 1: From Courage to Freedom: The Reality behind the Song
  • Lesson 2: From Courage to Freedom: Slavery's Dehumanizing Effects
  • Lesson 2: Slavery's Opponents and Defenders
  • Lesson 3: A Debate Against Slavery
  • Lesson 3: From Courage to Freedom
  • Lesson 3: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854: Popular Sovereignty and the Political Polarization over Slavery
  • Lesson 4: Life Before the Civil War
  • Spirituals
  • Who Was Cinque?

• KnowLA

  

  KnowLA is a comprehensive, dynamic online reference guide to the history and culture of Louisiana. Discover artist and naturalist John James Audubon with The Birds of America image gallery and video.

  Featured Websites

  • Louisiana Digital Library

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Early Multi-National Influences in the United States
  • French Connections
  • Lesson 1: Kate Chopin's "The Awakening": No Choice but Under?
  • Lesson 2: Kate Chopin's The Awakening: Chopin, Realism, and Local Color in late 19th Century America
  • Lesson 3: Kate Chopin's "The Awakening": Searching for Women & Identity in Chopin's "The Awakening"

• U.S. State and Territory Online Encyclopedias

  

  This collection of free, authoritative source information about the history, politics, geography, and culture of some of the states and the territories.

• Encyclopedia Virginia: Second Manassas Campaign

  

  This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Second Manassas Campaign of the Civil War. Waged August 13 – September 3, 1862, the battle was an important Confederate victory for General Robert E. Lee and his deputy, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Lesson 2: The Battles of the Civil War

• Atlas of Historic New Mexico

  

  NEH affiliate New Mexico Humanities Council's online Atlas of Historic New Mexico maps contains twenty historic maps of New Mexico, annotated with descriptions by the map makers and others people living, working, and exploring in New Mexico at that time.

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Common Visions, Common Voices
  • Images of the New World
  • Mapping Colonial New England: Looking at the Landscape of New England
  • Mexican Culture and History through Its National Holidays
  • Mission Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and the Spanish Mission in the New World
  • Not "Indians," Many Tribes: Native American Diversity
  • Other Worlds: The Voyage of Columbus
  • Traces: Historic Archaeology

• The September 11 Digital Archive

  

  The September 11 Digital Archive presents the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.

  Featured Websites

  • September 11 Digital Archive

• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

  

  Chronicling America enhances access to America's regional, historic newspapers. This site allows the visitor to search, view, clip, and save pages from 1836 through 1922, as well as find newspapers published between 1620 and the present. Learn more about using Chronicling America in the classroom with EDSITEment's Chronicling America special feature.

  Featured Websites

  • Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

• Plimoth Plantation

  

  This living history museum offers powerful personal encounters with history built on thorough research about the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s.  Multi-media references include interactive, You are the Historian, and a teacher’s guide to discover what really happened at the First Thanksgiving.

  Featured Websites

  • Plymouth Colony: Archive Project

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Colonizing the Bay
  • Early Multi-National Influences in the United States
  • Mapping Colonial New England: Looking at the Landscape of New England
  • What Should a House Do?

• Mission US: Think Fast! The App

  

  From Mission US and EDSITEment: an app with two quizzes on the Revolution and slavery's Underground Railroad. Image links to iTunes version; the Android version is here.

• The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau

  

  The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, also known as the Princeton Edition and as the Thoreau Edition, was founded in 1966 as an attempt to recover the lost words of one of America's most influential writers and to answer the pressing need for a complete, definitive, annotated, and readily available edition of his writings, including his Journal and correspondence

  Featured Websites

  • American Transcendentalism Web
  • Thoreau Reader

  Featured Lesson Plans

  • Mapping Colonial New England: Looking at the Landscape of New England