Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

One activity I have my students do annually is make a poster about what events happened in history on their birthday. It makes history “come alive” a bit more for them, and often prompts a desire to learn more about a particular topic.

There are quite a few of these kinds of “Today In History” sites out there. However, I don’t think most of them are particularly good.

Four of them stand-out. In order to make it on this “The Best…” list they have to:

* Provide information about multiple historical events that occurred on that day.

* Offer easy access to learn more information about some of the events.

* Be accessible to English Language Learners.

* Provide some multi-media resources.

Here are my picks for The Best “Today In History” Sites:

Number four is The New York Times: On This Day website. It has a nice front page listing many events, and offers additional information, and images, for a few of them.

Number three is MSN Encarta On This Day. The language is very accessible here — both for the front page and for pages to access for more information. The only negative is that it’s all serious stuff — there is no information on more light-hearted “historical” events.

Number two is the BBC’s On This Day. This is an excellent site that offers many of the same advantages of Encarta. It’s primary advantage over that resource is that the BBC offers more online videos if you want more information about events. It also has the same disadvantage — they both need to “lighten-up” a bit.

And now, for my pick for number one Best “Today In History” site is…. The History Channel: This Day In History. It covers many different kinds of events — serious and not-so-serious. And it offers accessible sources of additional information, including videos.

You can also find other sites that didn’t make this list on my website under This Day In History.

I’m adding the Library of Congress’ Jump Back In Time feature to this list.

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