Social Studies Education

The History Place

History Place functions as an independent resource center for teachers.

It includes everything from personal histories to photographs, all available on-line.

Growing Voters

Growing voters is a hotlist of vetted websites for knowledge about the electoral process. The activities are activity-centered, such as creating a candidate's vote-for-me pamphlet and interviewing candidates.

National Council for the Social Studies

NCSS is the umbrella professional organization for social studies teachers, including all the academic disciplines associated with history and social science. The site has been re-designed to include grant opportunities and conferences and courseware. Resources are listed with connections to the NCSS themes--handy for alignment of content and standards.

Washington State Council for the Social Studies

Washington State Council for the Social Studies provides a number of links to history and social studies units.

Teaching Economics and Personal Finance

In December of 2012, Nebraska adopted state social studies standards requiring districts to incorporate economics instructions for K-12. Resources for Teaching Economics & Personal Finance in Nebraska. The University of Nebraska created this resource to provide information and classroom lessons to help teach these economics-related social studies standards. These lessons can be adapted to your specific needs nationwide.

This Economics Education resource spans K-12 and offers strong support for integrating disciplines within social studies.

Commanding Heights

Commanding Heights, a PBS series about the future of the world economy, has been webified so that the 150 interview with major world leaders has been segmented for retrieval by theme, country, etc. Students can work at their own pace, also.

Virtual Stock Exchange Game

The Virtual Stock Exchange simulation takes advantage of new technologies and contains excellent content. Both consumer and business perspectives are included. The data is updated as trends actually change on the real stock exchange.

U.S. Government Information by Topic

U.S. Government Information demonstrates the transformation of the roles and functions of government offices in the electronic age. These changes are in the future for teachers but the present for students.

History Matters

History Matters , first developed at City University in NYC and George Mason near Washington, contains teaching materials, primary source documents and threaded discussions with leading U.S. history historians. Like this site, it serves as a gateway to pre-screened, quality websites – about 400 now, divided into ten chronological and twenty-two thematic categories.

The quality of this site reflects both the authors' expertise in history and social science education. Guidelines for sifting primary source evidence are provided. Examples of student publications on the Web will give you great ideas. Leading American historians link past and current events and analyze maps and music and much more. A not-to-be-missed site!!

EduConnect

EduConnect resembles History Matters but also includes references to university digitized collections.

Best History Sites

BestHistorySites is comprehensive in that it covers all eras of Western civilization, maps, and research links and some ideas about integrating technology. A few non-Western links are included. The annotations are good.

US Courts

US Courts provides an overview of our complex judiciary system. An advantage of this site is that it is up-to-date; it is often hard to find very recent information beyond media headlines.

Law Day

Every May is Law Day. Review the planning guide.