Mansel Wells's List: MS Social Studies Featured Sites

Look at Web sites as they appeared in the past. Enter the URL and select the date.

Scroll down the page for the following topics:\nAmerican History\nCurrent Events\nCountries of the World\nEconomics\nGeography\nHistory\nLewis and Clark\nPolitical Science\nPresidents\nWorld History\nWorld Wars

This page is a podcast directory to some of the best History Podcasts available. The intentions are twofold - first to create an easy database of great history podcasts, in order to provide the best historical podcast directory, and second to create pages where different podcasts on the same topic are gathered together.

Discover the Stories of New Americans
The New Americans Web site offers an educational adventure for students in grades 7–12. The site supplements the PBS documentary series, which explores the immigrant experience through personal stories. Interactive sections of the site allow students to explore the immigration experience through a timeline, maps and activities in tracking family history and examining the effect of immigration on the nation. Eleven lesson plans involve students in activities such as analyzing factual data or conducting oral histories of first- or second-generation immigrants. For workplaces, schools and community organizations that would like to use shorter stories from The New Americans to increase understanding of recent immigrants, Active Voice and Kartemquin Films offer three brief, themed Video/DVD Modules and Discussion Guides for a nominal fee.

A gathering place of primary-source information.

Sources held in archives, which document so much important first-hand information, are often not searchable by popular search engines. One needs to search within those institutional sites directly, using specific search phrases not readily discernible to non-scholars. The experience can be frustrating, resulting in researchers leaving sites without finding needed information.

AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront - not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take a site's users to places where those primary sources are found, and to which the site's users may otherwise not go. The author of each story is listed on the "chapters" page of the story. A link to the author provides more detailed information.

A free online computer game from Cable in the Classroom lets students experience the pressure cooker of a presidential campaign, requiring players to manage campaign money, lobby interest groups, and make gut-wrenching decisions when scandal threatens their bid for the White House. First created during the 2004 campaign season, “eLECTIONS” was refined and reintroduced this year. Players can run for president as a Democrat, Republican, or third-party candidate and can choose their platform issues, ranging from taxes to national defense to education. Each player moves through a game board that includes pitfalls such as small-scale family or campaign scandals. As the 2008 presidential race heats up this summer and fall, the site’s creators say eLECTIONS could be a valuable tool to help students understand the events driving the campaign. “eLECTIONS is an excellent resource for teachers and students who are trying to understand the events and decisions that shape voter contests,” said Joanne Whe

Lesson plans based on content area groupings (e.g. language art, math, science, etc.)

Great resource for remediation and AIS. Resources for lessons, practice, and interactive activities

On-A-Slant Mandan Village using Virtual Reality technology. The remains of On-A-Slant village are located near Mandan, ND on the grounds of the Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park.

The On-A-Slant Virtual Village was modeled based on scholarly research of the site, the Native population, and the era. The Virtual Village is as historically accurate as the documentation allows. The slice of time presented to viewers is ca. 1776, five years before the village's abandonment in 1781.

The On-A-Slant Virtual Village employs state-of-the-art 3D computer visualizations that immerse viewers in the past, and provide them with a means to "travel through time" and "walk through" the site as it existed then.

T he modules cover more than twenty topics that correspond to the major periods in American history and take into consideration the history standards, both required and advanced, to which high school students are held. Each module includes:

a succinct historical overview
learning tools including lesson plans, quizzes, and activities
recommended documents, films, and historic images