An Online Resource for Teachers, Parents, and Students

EDSITEment publishes humanities content appropriate for K–12 classrooms and is used by elementary, middle, and high school teachers across the country. Image courtesy of EDSITEment.

EDSITEment is an NEH project that brings together the internet’s best humanities educational material for use by parents, teachers, and students. EDSITEment features more than 500 lesson plans, videos, and interactive learning tools, as well as an extensive calendar that showcases lesson plans and resources on subjects as varied as the lives of Rosa Parks, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and “Buffalo Bill” Cody; the literary works of Lewis Carroll and John Steinbeck; and historical events like the incorporation of New Amsterdam (New York City), the end of the French and Indian War, and the signing of the Yalta Agreement.

EDSITEment features more than 500 lesson plans, videos, and interactive learning tools. Image courtesy of EDSITEment.

With 2.5 million unique visitors per year, EDSITEment is used primarily by elementary, middle, and high school educators, as well as community college instructors in every state. And in addition to commissioning and vetting its own lesson planning resources, EDSITEment takes the best of research and programming funded by the NEH, reorients it for K–12 audiences, and makes it available for classroom use. Through EDSITEment, the public can access NEH-funded educational games such as Abraham Lincoln at the Crossroads and Laura Jernegan, Girl on a Whale Ship. Visitors can also access databases like the National Digital Newspapers Program and Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database.

In conjunction with Ken Burns’s release of *The Vietnam War,* EDSITEment published resources that help teachers plan oral history projects featuring veterans. Image courtesy of EDSITEment.

Importantly, making NEH-funded material accessible is a considerable undertaking that involves creating lesson plans for different age groups, as well as a range of accompanying materials. In conjunction with Ken Burns’s release of The Vietnam War, NEH awarded Maryland Humanities funding to create an extensive oral history toolkit for teachers based on its Veterans Oral History Project, a program that pairs high school students with Vietnam veterans to collect and publish their life stories as oral histories. EDSITEment has made this toolkit available for teachers across the country.