Social Studies/History - Museum Sites

Aircraft of the Smithsonian
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/index.cfm
On this Web site, you can browse through the 365 pieces of aircraft in the collection at the National Air and Space Museum. There are two ways you can search. You can search for a specific aircraft with the search engine or you can search using the alphabetical index. Besides a photo, manufacturer name, and specs, there is a detailed history of what the plane was used for.

American Centuries: Views from New England
http://www.memorialhall.mass.edu/
American Centuries features a digital collection of approximately 1,800 objects from Memorial Hall Museum and Library of Deerfield, MA. Teachers will want to access the excellent curricula for Elementary or Middle School students. Activities include transcribing primary sources and training young eyes to observe artifacts of the past.

American Football League
http://www.profootballhof.com/history/decades/1960s/afl.jsp
The Pro Football Hall of Fame provides a look at the American Football League before it merged with the National Football League. This page includes information regarding events, athletes, and statistics.

American Red Cross Museum
http://www.redcross.org/museum/
This is a good site about the American Red Cross. Especially interesting are the sections on History and Exhibits and Collections.

Computer History Museum
http://www.computerhistory.org/
"It's not just a museum. It's one of the largest collections of computer-related artifacts, documents, film, and photographs in the world. Here, you can explore our online archives, browse the exhibits, or learn more about preserving this living history of the information age."

Digital History
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu  
Digital History includes a U.S. history textbook; over 400 annotated documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, supplemented by sources on slavery, Mexican American and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; essays; multimedia exhibitions; and reference resources that include a searchable database of 1,500 annotated links, classroom handouts, etc. The site's Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians. This Web site was designed and developed to support the teaching of American History in K-12 schools.

Doodles, Drafts, and Designs
http://www.sil.si.edu/exhibitions/doodles/introduction.htm
This exhibition presents examples of industrial drawings in the collections of the National Museum of American History and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Some are working drawings, ideas sketched in pencil or ink. Others are more finished, designed for presentation. A few are printed, either as sales material or as part of a patent application. They visually document American industrial creativity, from inventor's hand and investor's boardroom, to patent office, factory floor, and manufacturer's showroom.

Eduweb (Musee McCord Museum)
http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en/eduweb/
The McCord Museum web site offers numerous resources for exploring Canadian history, including Keys to History, a database of 90,000 images (2,000 of which are fully documented), and virtual exhibitions. EduWeb presents diverse ways of using Web resources in secondary-level history classes. The site includes 50 thematic tours about major events and everyday life in the past. There are activities; mainly observation games, quizzes, and inquiries into the past. These activities are described in a pedagogical guide entitled ClioClic. The site permits visitors to produce their own visual presentations in the form of Web tours, where they can add their own images drawn from external sources.

Grout Museum District, Immigration and Industrialization
http://campsilos.org/excursions/grout/index.htm
The Grout Museum District Excursion Website is sponsored by Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area. Upon entering this interactive educational website, students in grades 4-8 are transformed into historians as they explore primary source photographs, letters and artifacts related to the themes of immigration and agriculture-based industrialization in the heartland.

Harvest of History
http://www.harvestofhistory.org  
The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, has developed Harvest of History, an interactive website with an in-depth, interactive virtual tour of The Farmers' Museum and an interdisciplinary, inquiry-based curriculum for the fourth-grade classroom about New York State agriculture and rural life. The curriculum meets national and state standards for social studies, science, math, and technology. Although the curriculum is geared heavily towards New York State, it is a national model for teaching agricultural heritage.

HistoryWired
http://historywired.si.edu/index.html
One could spend hours exploring HistoryWired, which gives a "backstage tour" of over 450 objects sitting in storage at the National Museum of American History. The site's graphical interface, which looks like a land grid map, lets users click on different squares on the map to learn about a particular object.

Hudson River Portfolio (New York Public Library)
http://www2.nypl.org/home/Hudson/index.html  
The New York Public Library has created this site to make rare images and texts available to researchers, students and lovers of Hudson River history and art. These resources bring together some of the library's most celebrated materials (prints, maps, guidebooks, literature, photos, etc.) from the 19th century. There is an historical overview, a "panoramic tour" using the materials, access to the collection by type of resource, and a topical list for browsing the collection.

Hyperhistory Online
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
HyperHistory has over 2,000 files covering 3,000 years of world history with a combination of colorful graphics, lifelines, timelines, and maps. Categories are People, History, Events, and Maps color coded according to Science, Technology, Economy, Discovery, Culture, Philosophy, Art, Music, Poetry, Religion, Theology, Politics and War. A massive site that is well worth a visit!

IEEE Virtual Museum
http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/
For hundreds of years, engineers have been finding new ways of using electricity to revolutionize the way we work, play learn, and communicate. Here you'll explore the history of these technologies, find out how they work, and learn about some of the people who invented them.

Inuit Carvings in Ivory
http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibits/ivory/
The Royal Ontario Museum provides an exploration of ivory carvings made by Inuit artists. This comprehensive site does more than showcase works by master carvers. It also tells the underlying stories that tie the ivories to the culture and environment of the Inuit. You can learn about the animals from which ivory is harvested and about Inuit use of ivory (tools, weapons, amulets, and symbolic icons) plus related topics. Videos and rotatable images for 360-degree viewing of sculptures enrich the site.

Invention at Play: Invention Playhouse
http://www.inventionatplay.org/playhouse_main.html
From the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History comes this wonderful resource for developing logical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration - in students of any age level. There are four interactive puzzles - Puzzle Blocks, Cloud Dreamer, Word Play, and the especially addictive Tinker Ball - and all lend themselves to collaborative decision-making, innovative thinking, and a lot of just plain-old fun! This page is part of the larger site which deals with play as invention and invention as play. It's good to remember the preceding sentence should you need to justify your 73d attempt to get that darn Tinker Ball into the little cup!

Living Room Candidate (American Museum of the Moving Image)
http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us/index.php  
The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004 is an innovative online exhibition presenting more than 250 television commercials from every election year beginning in 1952, when the first campaign ads aired, and including ads from this year's campaign. Users can watch nearly four hours of TV commercials and explore the expanding world of Web-based political advertising. The site includes a searchable database and features commentary, historical background, election results, and navigation organized by both year and theme. Each commercial selected is accompanied by a list of related commercials in order to help guide the viewer through the collection.

Mariners' Museum
http://www.mariner.org/educationalad/ageofex/
Using lesson plans, vocabulary activities, and links to other Web sites along with the museum's exhibit, your upper-elementary through high school students can learn about maritime discoveries from ancient times through the travels of Captain Cook.

Mariners' Museum: Exploration Through the Ages
http://www.mariner.org/exploration/index.php
This carefully crafted site addresses many aspects of world exploration: Topics covered include: The Great Exchange, Changing View of the World, Life at Sea, Travel Writers, Exploration From the Beginning of Civilization, and even Exploring the Chesapeake. In addition, the site addresses over 75 famous explorers, providing basic biographical facts, their exploring achievements, their ships and tools of navigation and voyage routes. Beautiful images help the story of exploration unfold.

Museum of Online Museums
http://www.coudal.com/moom.php
This is like the archive of all archives and the museum of all museums. Here you will find great links to new and exciting exhibits online in the Museum Campus section. The links in this section take you directly to the museum or exhibit in the title link. Below this are the Permanent Collections, and then the Galleries, Exhibits, and Shows.

MuseumsUSA
http://www.museumsusa.org/ 
MuseumsUSA contains a searchable directory of more than 15,000 museums of all types and sizes, literally art to zoos, tiny to giant, and in small towns and big cities throughout the United States. The database created collaboratively for MuseumsUSA by the state museum associations is the most extensive listing of American museums ever assembled. It is, however, a work that will always be in progress as more information is collected, and information that has already been collected is updated.

National Archives Learning Curve
http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/
Do your students need to know more about the Cold War, Great Britain during WWII or political reform in Britain during the 19th Century? The National Archives of the UK has created a site that contains resources and a proposed online library of teacher lessons and student work. Look under Snapshots for activities based on visual sources from the national archive.

National Atomic Museum
http://www.atomicmuseum.com/tour/
Take a virtual tour through the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Exhibits trace the history of the atomic age beginning with Ancient Arms Control. A "cessation of armaments" was first recorded in 546 B.C.E. The tour highlights nuclear medicine, Madame Curie, Road to the Atomic Age, and The Manhattan Project. The Decision to Drop is accompanied by pictures and quotes. The exhibits end with technology through the Cold War and Expansion eras. This is an easy-to-understand overview that lends a historical perspective to nuclear energy and weaponry.

National Library of Australia: World Treasures
http://www.nla.gov.au/worldtreasures/
Have students explore the contributions of world cultures in this online exhibit. Lessons in the teacher's section support the online materials. Each treasure lists the museum that houses it; an interesting supplemental activity would have students uncover how foreign museums ended up with another culture's treasure.

National Museum of African Art
http://africa.si.edu/index2.html
Although not brand new, the Web site of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art is worth a visit. In the Art and Programs section, clicking on each exhibit takes you to the Web page for that exhibit. There is also an interesting section on the various resources of the museum.

National Museum of Natural History
http://www.mnh.si.edu/
This division of the Smithsonian has a wealth of topics related to natural history, and is updated regularly for new features. Highlights change regularly making this a must visit site monthly, just for the new information available. This month find out about the Coelacanth, mosquitoes and West Nile disease, and Lewis and Clark As Naturalists under highlights or "What's New", a regular site feature.

National Portrait Gallery
http://www.npg.si.edu/
The National Portrait Gallery in the U.S. nation's capital documents history in its portraits of the men and women who helped to make the country what it is today. At its Web site, one may take a virtual tour of the permanent collection of the gallery as well as exhibitions it has featured in the past.

National Watch and Clock Museum
http://www.nawcc.org/museum/nwcm/MusMap.htm
This fascinating site offers an interactive virtual tour of The National Watch and Clock Museum. Click and explore through an amazing variety of galleries exploring early time-keeping devices, wristwatches, tower clocks, and even novel animated clocks.

Natural History Museum
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/mammals/index.html
From tiny shrews to enormous whales, mammals are the most diverse group of animals ever to live on our planet. Equipped with wings, fins, horns and spines – they have evolved to fill many niches and roles. Discover more about this complex group, which of course, includes us.

Nobel e-Museum
http://nobelprize.org/index.html
Nobel e-Museum offers information on all Prize Winners to date, the Nobel Organization, Alfred Nobel, and Nobel events, as well as related material and games. The games are located at http://www.nobel.se/physics/educational/index.html and they are educational. They provide information. simulations, and challenges on: Microscopes, Lasers, the interior of matter, energy, X-rays, accelerators, and vacuum tubes. Age/grade levels vary.

Ology
http://ology.amnh.org/mythiccreatures/?src=h_nc
This site from the American Museum of Natural History explores Mythic Creatures. Play Mythic Mystery Map to collect mythic creatures cards, or click on an Ology on the left for fun activities and "Stuff to Do" in various categories.

Retratos (2,000 Years of Latin-American Portraits)
http://www.retratos.org/
This is a multi-museum exhibition featuring more than 100 portraits, and artist information, from over 15 countries in Latin America. Examples from five distinct time periods in Latin American history are presented, beginning with pre-Columbian America and continuing into the contemporary era. An excellent resource for examining the artistic output of a culture over time and for learning about important trends in Latino art and about the political history of the region. The site, available either in English or Spanish, also offers an amazingly useful 80-page dual-language teacher's resource guide.

Show Me
http://www.show.me.uk/
Part of "24 Hour Museum," a U.K. site offering links to hundreds of museums, this page offers child-specific activities such as: "Cracker — Break the Code," "Design a Tile," and "Create Your Own Creatures." Each link brings users to pages from a particular museum's site. But users can find many more links by clicking on "Pick a Topic," while parents and/or teachers can find resources by clicking on their special links.

Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga
http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/
This amazing site, from the National Museum of Natural History, is all about the Vikings. Each stop along the voyage of the Vikings to North America has sections about archeology, sagas, history, genetics, and environment. The enhanced site has audio narratives that play while you visit each stop.

Virtual Exhibits from the Virtual Museum of Canada
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/Exhibits/index.html
View Canada in terms of the artwork of Canada and the Americas, historic events that have impacted the Canadian people, and major influences in the Canadian culture. Students can also discover how learning science, doing science, and applying science each play a distinct role in the development of a country. The Teacher’s Centre includes search capabilities for museum and online educational programs.

Virtual Wall
http://www.thevirtualwall.org/
The Virtual Wall is a digital version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Users can view any of the 140 panels present on the actual memorial, see profiles of the men and women who died in service to their country, read featured remembrances left at the wall by visitors, and actually leave remembrances for individuals. The site presents a daily and humbling reminder of the individuals lost in the war.

Wayside, Home of Authors
http://www.nps.gov/archive/mima/wayside/index1.htm
The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts is a literary landmark. Read about the literary families who have called it home, and see images of the house, the writers and the time period. Home of Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and children's author Margaret Sidney, the home is now a National Park Service museum. This website provides biographies of the authors, the history of the house, and an online tour of the home's exhibits. Such a website can give students a different perspective into the lives of authors.