The theme of this week's ATS picks is History/Social Studies
1) Online History Games
Playing History is a forum and rating website for over 126 online history-related games for teachers and students alike. The games are compiled and organized by topic, difficulty, general ratings, and much more. The search tool is also very helpful and easy to use when trying to find a specific game. Playing History is also user-friendly, allowing students and teachers to post reviews, scores, and comment on feedback of the website itself. Although not all of the games have consistently high ratings, Playing History is a great place to find educational games online for students to learn more about a particular subject.
2) National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults
The NARA Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of history that examines thousands of documents, photographs, and pieces of history that have been integrated in a digital format. Upon entering the homepage, the user is given eight random archives to choose from. Clicking on one will give a description and a brief history of that archive, as well as displays a large variety of similar archives. The user has the ability to shuffle, rearrange, collect, and explore archives, as well as search for specific points in history using a keyword search. Although a lack of initial organization or index might seem overwhelming, Digital Vaults is a wonderfully imaginative resource for exploring history in a digitally compiled way.
Sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration
3) Life Magazine's Civil Rights: Women in the Struggle
Life.com presents a photo gallery of famous women in the struggle for civil rights. Each photo provides a concise description of the importance of each woman, along with links providing more information. Although the collection is not very extensive, each of the fifteen photos provides a unique insight into an important part of a movement that largely goes underrepresented. As far as a general resource, this website is a good start to further student research and understanding, albeit not very comprehensive.
4) EdtechTeacher's Best of History: Games and Animations
The Games and Animations section of EdTechTeacher's Best of History sites is a list of fun history games and animations organized around broad historical periods. Most of these games and animation are aimed at students ages 10-16.
