History Matters is a project built from the combined efforts of the City University of New York and George Mason University. History Matters is designed for use by high school and college teachers and students. History Matters hosts a collection of thousands of items useful for the study and teaching of US History. History Matters has hundreds of lesson plan ideas and suggested methods for teaching US History. Two things really caught my attention on History Matters. The first I noticed was the great collection of audio and video files for student and teacher use. The second thing that caught my attention was the collection of hundreds of digitized primary resources. Additionally, History Matters, hosts a small collection of virtual tours and interactive activities designed for high school students.

Applications for Education
Locating and accessing primary sources can be logistically difficult for high school students in rural areas. The Internet has made finding primary source documents much easier than it used to be, but still if you’re not near a large public library or a university it can be hard to actually view the resources. History Matters makes hundreds of primary sources available to students everywhere.

The search page on History Matters is one the best I’ve seen for locating resources for use in US History courses. The search page allows users to set their search parameters by selecting from 63 possible categories. The categories of resources are defined by era, concept, and media type. There is also a key word search option.

Make sure you visit the Students as Historians section to interactive activities and displays that students can utilize.