DocsTeach has long been one of my go-to recommendations for teachers of U.S. History. DocsTeach provides a wealth of digitized primary source artifacts that can be incorporated into lessons for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. You can search for those artifacts according to era in U.S. History, according to artifact type (text, photograph, map, audio, video), and you can search DocsTeach’s library according by keyword. Speaking of keyword search, if you search for “transcontinental railroad” you’ll find a collection of artifacts that were recently added to the DocsTeach library.

DocsTeach is more than just a collection of primary source artifacts for U.S. History teachers and students. DocsTeach offers thirteen templates that you can use to build interactive, online activities based upon the artifacts that you find in the DocsTeach library. Your students can complete the activities online without the need for an email address or account on DocsTeach. I wrote a fairly detailed overview of how to use the analysis template a couple of years ago. You can find that overview here.

While they’re not exactly how-to videos, DocsTeach does have a small collection of recorded webinars in which you can see examples of how to use DocsTeach in your classroom. Those recorded webinars are available in this YouTube playlist.