In surveying available online educational resources, one of the first places to look for possible classroom help are extensive directories compiling links to other sites. Leading sites include:

        --Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, publishing links to social studies lesson plans and other resources;

        --Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), a federally-funded gateway to educational materials to subject-specific lesson plans, curriculum units and other education resources, along with a personalized question and answer service where teachers and others may ask guidance on specific  topics or problems;

        --Gateway to Educational Materials (thegateway.org), a US Department of Education effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial sites;

       --National Council for Social Studies providing links categorized by the ten themes of the Curriculum Standards for Social Studies;

       --Center for Civic Education, with excellent links to organizations and teaching resources, including international civics resources through its management of the Web site www.civnet.org, sponsored by its affiliate Civitas International, a world-wide non-governmental organization for civic education; and 

      --Civics Online, collaborative project based at Michigan State University, publishes extensive links to lesson plans, other resources.

        It may be more fun, however, for both teachers and students to take the time to explore the official sites of the collective attic of the nation's history, the National Archives and Records Administration; the Library of Congress; and the Smithsonian Institution. The immense collections of these government repositories, once largely unavailable to the general public, have now been dusted off and given new life and accessibility by electronic technology. Original documents, maps, photographs and even audio and video collections have been converted to digital formats for viewing and downloading. And in many cases, the archivists of the collections have made special efforts to integrate the original documents and materials in their care with online lesson plans and other suggested ways in how the sources may be incorporated into classroom teaching and discussion.                

       The National Archives, for example, publishes The Charters of Freedom, online images of the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights (indeed the only current way to view these documents through the Archives until its rotunda reopens in 2003 after completion of its current renovation).  In addition to the original documents, the Archives Web also links to related resources giving students background on the evolution of each document, such as historical summaries and other manuscripts used as sources for the original drafts. The Archives also offers its online 'Digital Classroom' to encourage teachers of students at all levels to use archival documents in  class. Here teachers can choose from suggested lesson plans, workshops and other activities developed by classroom teachers in partnership with education specialists at the Archives correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government addressing constitutional issues and encouraging the analysis of primary source documents. Other online lesson plans and projects focus on events like the Amistad slave ship uprising and its related constitutional litigation; how the real-life families serving as models for the novels and TV series Little House on the Prairie reflected the immigrants who settled on the frontier; and the constitutional and practical issues weighed by prosecutors in deciding whether to indict President Nixon for obstructing justice in the Watergate cover-up.  For students whose visit to the Archives stimulates further interest, the site also gives tips on how they can build their own archives for their school.   The Archives site also links to the individual sites of the Presidential Libraries, allowing visitors to review their important documents and images of past administrations, such as the background materials relating to President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb to end World War II.

        The Library of Congress adds to the Archives through its own collections with over seven million digital images, including The Learning Page with a selection with online lesson plans. One of the outstanding collections for civics and government is A Century of Lawmaking for A New Nation compiling records and debates from 1774-1873 of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress giving a documentary history of the construction of the nation and the development of the federal government from the Revolution through Reconstruction. Like the National Archives, the Library of Congress also has developed special resources for teachers and students indexed on 'The Learning Page'. 

          The Smithsonian Institution, while somewhat less relevant to civics and legal educators given the focus of much of its collections on anthropology and other natural sciences, still provides a variety of online resources to complement social studies curricula. The Smithsonian's main page for educators includes biographies of the presidents; profiles of the history of women's suffrage; and online exhibitions on civics-related topics, such as the current profile of the political and legal issues leading to the enactment in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.