The Library of Congress has funded four impressive-looking online tools to help teaching and learning with primary sources:

 

Eagle Eye Citizen:

Eagle Eye Citizen engages middle and high school students in solving and creating interactive challenges on American history, civics, and government with Library of Congress primary sources in order to develop students’ civic understanding and historical thinking skills.

Teachers can create virtual classrooms to monitor student progress, and students can create their own interactives, too!

 

Engaging Congress:

Developed by the Indiana University Center on Representative Government, Engaging Congress is a series of game-based learning activities that explores the basic tenets of representative government and the challenges that it faces in contemporary society. Primary source documents are used to examine the history and evolution of issues that confront Congress today.

 

Kid Citizen:

KidCitizen introduces a new way for young students (K-5) to engage with history through primary sources. In KidCitizen’s nine interactive episodes, children explore civics and government concepts by investigating primary source photographs from the Library of Congress. They also connect what they find with their daily lives. KidCitizen includes cloud software tools that let educators create their own episodes and share them with students.

 

My CaseMaker:

Case Maker is a customizable system for inquiry-based learning for K-12 students using primary sources from the Library of Congress. Modeled after the ‘observe, reflect, question,’ framework developed under the TPS program, Case Maker guides students to challenge a question, collect evidence, and make a case.

Teachers can also create virtual classrooms here to monitor student progress.

 

I’m adding these resources to:

The Best Resources For Using Primary Sources

The Best Sites Where Students Can Work Independently & Let Teachers Check On Progress