In the next several months, the American Social History Project/Center for Media Learning plans to launch an online resource database of history materials for educators. To assist with planning, ASHP/CML recently conducted a survey of educators to learn more about how they use the Web to find resources for their classrooms. We were curious to know about what kinds of Web-based technology teachers had access to, what sorts of materials they look for online, and what they generally do with what they find online. We collected 228 responses from 38 states and the District of Columbia. (By the way, thank you to those of you on our mailing lists who took the time to complete the survey or to pass it along to colleagues.)

Overall we discovered that teachers use the Web primarily to find primary sources and to brush up on their background knowledge of topics. We were gratified to learn that a majority of our history teachers use arts and literature sources daily or once a week. Survey results confirmed that teachers want but have difficulty finding great primary sources for students: materials they want are scattered, difficult to navigate, or do not address the social history questions they wish to raise. A fuller report on our survey data can be found on ASHP/CML’s Now and Then blog.