A New Take on History

If you are a fourth grade teacher and have not been to the North Carolina History Project web page you might just be missing out on some new and interesting facts about North Carolina.  You might be asking how can this site benefit me?  Here is how they describe it. "... an edited, evolving, and free online encyclopedia of North Carolina that also includes commentaries, lesson plans, and a community calendar."

To me the site offers a lot about North Carolina that has been broken down into multiple categories and listing so that it makes it easier on the researcher to locate topics for discussion, reports, conversations an other information.

The site homepage is laid out well to offer the visitor a quick glance at what is available but to also provide the most amount of searching power in a few short clicks.  On the website you have scrolling image set of people, places and things inherent to North Carolina that you can click on and read more information about.  Across the top of the page you have an alphabetical list so you can perform a broad topic search just like an Encyclopedia by just clicking on the letter you want.  There is a Featured entry of the day section in the bottom middle of the page that offers you a one click link to read more information about the topic.  You can also browse through the Category dropdown menu on the right side of the page to filter information about specific topics.  Categories like Colonial North Carolina, Places, Document, etc.  Then in the bottom right corner of the page lists out the latest information that has been added to the site.  So far in just a few days of researching the site I have been able to find lots of information quickly and easily through the different search options available on the site

The North Carolina History Project site is funded by the John Locke Foundation and they are currently offering a Citizens' Constitutional Workshop from the link on the left banner.  This link takes you off of the site to the John Locke Foundation website for further information.

There is a separate Educators Corner on the site that offers some research and lesson plan information that has been shared with the site through user created content.  Currently there are not many user lesson plans available but there is a call to share on the site where if you create lesson plans from the content on the site you can share it with them and they will review and post the information for others to use.

If you are teaching North Carolina History whether in Elementary or Middle School this is a site that you just might want to add to your resource list not only for your use but for your students as well.