BBC History

On this site you'll find in-depth articles, multimedia (like games, virtual tours and animations) as well as bite-size material like timelines and short biographies of historic figures. Topics from Ancient History to Wars and Conflict. Within each topic you'll find sub-topics devoted to key areas such as Ancient Egypt or World War One. Much of the content is about British History, though they're now expanding into other areas.
 

BBC Walk Through Time

History Print-outs to Do in the Classroom. Age Range: 7-9 years old -History Key Stage 2 (England)

The Walk Through Time website is based on the new BBC series of the same name, but can be used independently to explore streets, people and houses of the Roman, Viking, Tudor, Victorian times and the 1950s. These periods are compared and contrasted using games and activities.

www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass

This constantly updated site is as informative and diverting as an exploration of the British Museum itself and a beacon for some of the great cultural institutions in this country that struggle to make the most of the web. Here, objects stay online long after they have been returned to the storerooms. There is nothing ostentatious or gimmicky in the presentation of its archive of 5,000 artefacts: as solid as a granite bust, it displays photos and text with stark simplicity. The selection of online tours is a potpourri of exotica that often displays a keen curatorial eye, with plenty of insights into ancient civilisations, and joins up the dots between related objects better than the museum’s display cases.

Teaching Ideas -History

There are  links to some good History activities and games, recommended books about History, and some links to other useful History sites.

BBC guide to the first world war

This outstanding BBC guide to the first world war makes you wish there were similar destinations for every topic. Easy to use and quick to load, it caters superbly for all audiences, with archive film and documentary clips about gas attacks and shell shock, interactive games and animations, veteran interviews, even virtual tours of trench systems and the Somme. True to good history, personal stories form the backbone of the learning: the experiences of an observer, a soldier, a sister and a survivor all build the bigger picture with emotion and detail. Nearby, teachers are offered relevant lines of inquiry — a feature sadly absent from many other sites — and, back at the front page, you can learn about the causes and battles of the war and read news from the home front. Note, too, the excellent timeline and illustrated reading matter. Top of the class for teachers and pupils.

www.britishpathe.com

In a couple of searches, you rapidly discover a wealth of news footage in the archives of this London-based film-maker. Here is a comprehensive historical resource offering 75 years of indexed, annotated material. Search for battles, riots or famous names such as Trotsky or Baldwin, and you find life. Changes in cars, dress, buildings and even people’s height are easily seen. This online gem puts history into a context students can understand, and the normally paid-for content is free to classrooms, making it ideal, in theory, as a teaching aid. However, at times the footage is raw, and, despite guaranteed fascination, the unwieldy three-stage process makes watching an ordeal — there is a bizarre shopping basket, then a form to fill in, and you can download only one film at a time. A capacious site, but the functional irritations detract from its worth.

http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/

Collect Britain houses 90,000 archived images and sounds relating to artefacts in the British Library’s collection. Since the early days of the national curriculum, England’s qualifications authority has pushed for students to be taught with a greater sense of historical chronology, and this slick site is an ideal aid. It helps pupils to assemble the bigger picture by linking maps, prints and drawings in an easy- to-navigate manner. Teachers can find neatly captured examples that vividly contextualise a war, a king or a period: the Victorian era is brought to life with a collection of advertisements, fashion catalogues and ephemera. Others might head to its guided tours — a Flash pre-sentation about the East End uses inter-active maps and drawings to show its development. A promising site, but pupils may need an expert guide.

www.24hourmuseum.org.uk

With 3,000 places to visit, this comprehensive guide to the UK’s museums, galleries and heritage sites has enough suggestions to fill a lifetime of weekends. The downside is that it is little more than a nuts-and-bolts database — beyond the listings and “related news” section, content is weak. As an easy-to-use portal, it is a good reminder that you can’t beat a real-life trip to a museum as the best way to learn about maritime history, the world wars or London’s canals. Surfers are alerted to events and expert guided tours that could be overlooked, but the site is slow to load and the quality of information about listed exhibitions is only as good as the details provided by their marketing arms. The listings are in many cases too vague to put a packed lunch at risk.

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

The sheer scope of Spartacus’s content merits the encyclopedia tag, although its basic layout and poor design are more on-screen book than multimedia feast. It features in-depth sections on a huge range of topics. Read in detail about Churchill, Cromwell and an impressive array of names. Countless entries cross-reference each other, and browsing yields rich knowledge of social trends (the trade-union movement) and historical events (the Russian revolution). Students aged 15 and up will find valuable material for following up a lesson. Although this is a free site, each page is scarred by banner adverts that force you to scroll to find text. Though too garish for the classroom, and no model of how to find facts and present them, or advertise, Spar-tacus is a dependable one-stop source of student-friendly information.

www.timeref.com

Run by an enthusiast with a passion for medieval Britain, Timeref claims to follow British history from before the time of Alfred the Great up to the start of the Tudor age (835-1499). The most prominent feature of this suitably archaic-looking site is a huge interactive timeline that lists and cross-links people, events and places. Content is limited when compared with Spartacus, but there are nice touches: you can explore wonderful 3-D images of old structures, including a Norman motte-and-bailey castle, a siege tower and a reconstruction of Bodiam Castle. They take seconds to load, and really give you a feel for these historical structures.