Professional Development

English on the Web

Directories

EDSITEment
edsitement.neh.gov/
This site from the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with the National Trust for the Humanities, and the MarcoPolo Education Foundation brings online humanities resources from some of the world's great museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and universities directly to your classroom.

GEM - The Gateway to Educational Materials
thegateway.org
This site features a searchable database of reviewed online teaching ideas, lesson plans, websites and more.

ThinkQuest Library
www.thinkquest.org/library/
Studnet-designed sites explore a wide variety of content areas, including the humanities.

Voice of the Shuttle
http://vos.ucsb.edu
This directory is edited by Alan Liu, Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It is focused on  providing educators and researchers links to humanities and humanities-related resources on the Internet.

Intute: Arts and Humanities
http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/
Links to resources in archaeology, history, religion, languages, literature, the classics, philosophy, linguistics, and comparative literature.

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Original Materials

The Online Books Page
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books
This site has links to over 13,000 books and other print materials online. The site is searchable by author, title, or topic.

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Other Resources

American Memory Collection from the National Digital Library 
http://rs6.loc.gov:80
Wide collection of online exhibits on American history including images, sound recordings, movies, maps, and documents from the Library of Congress. 

National Endowment for the Humanities
http://www.neh.gov/
News, grant info,  training and other info.  

Humanities Interactive
http://www.humanities-interactive.org
This site from the Texas Council for the Humanities contains exhibits on a wide-variety of topics including: Ancient Cultures; the Medieval World; the New World; and Literature. The site is intended for use by students and includes lesson plans, essays, games and more.

Audio Interviews
e. e. cummings on what makes an artist. Watson and Crick on the discovery of DNA. Any Warhol speaks on how he selected his portrait subjects. Artists, poets, writers, actors, politicians, and other key figures of the 20th century are featured in audio interviews at this site from the BBC. In addition to the interviews, you will also find biographies.

Lit Web
Biographies of over 500 authors from Japanese avant-garde writer Kobo Abe to German biographer Stefan Zweig. You'll also find some of the author's works on the site.

American Writers
C-SPAN has brought together writers, scholars, historians and actors to examine the lives and works of 20th Century American writers who have influenced our history. You can find biographies of the writers and view the programs online. in addition to the series on 20th Century writers, there are also profiles and programs on American writers from the 17th-19th century. Featured authors include: Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Upton Sinclair, Langston Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck, Ayn Rand, Ernie Pyle, Jack Kerouac, and James Baldwin.

Poets.org
At this site from the American Academy of Poets you can visit the listening booth to hear poets reading their works, read biographies and representative works for over 450 poets, join a discussion forum, or find out what poetry activities are happening in your area. Featured poets include: Donald Hall, Maya Angelou, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Burns, e.e. cummings, Nikki Giovanni, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Maxine Kumin, Amy Lowell, and Carl Sandburg.

BrainPop
www.brainpop.com
This site has educational movies on a variety of topics .

Online Media Sources

Publishers

Random House Teacher Center
Author bios, teaching ideas, and book info.

Harper Collins
Book reviews, games, and a section on how a book is made.

Award-winning Titles

Just For Fun

Teaching Resources

CyberGuides
CyberGuides, developed by the San Diego County Office of Education, are supplementary web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature. They are designed for the classroom with one online computer.

The Doucette Index to K-12 Teaching Ideas for Literature
Searchable index to books and Websites with teaching suggestions and ideas.

Yale New Haven Teacher Institute
You will find a huge collection of detailed teacher-designed units of study here. A wealth of teaching ideas!

Read, Think, Write
This site from the International Reading Association features lesson plans that use literature to explore a variety of themes.