I.   Using Sources on the Internet

       The various links below and the commentary provided constitute most of the information presented by Professors Light Cummins and Tom Baker during their sessions at the Texas Council for the Social Studies Conference in El Paso, Texas.  The title of their presentation was "Online Resources and Lessons for the Teaching of Texas history."

     A. General Guidelines

          Determining the validity and utility of websites on the Internet can sometimes be a very difficult job.  John West, the director of the Abell Library at Austin College, and his staff have developed criteria for judging the academic and educational validity of websites on the Internet.  Any teacher who is conducting online research directed towards class preparation would absolutely profit from applying the criteria developed by the Austin College Library to any site that they might wish to use.

     B. Texas Reference Sources Online
      
          The Texas Library Association maintains a bibliographical website based on  the fifth edition of the reference publication Texas Reference Sources. This site gives teachers the opportunity to do online searching in Texas bibliographies of books and other printed materials that can be used as enhancements and augmentations to class preparation.


II.  Texas History Lesson Plans

      A. The TEKS for Texas History

          All comprehensive Texas history lesson plans should be keyed to the standards of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills criteria.  The above-noted link provides access to the seventh grade version of the TEKS.

      B.  Organizations with Texas History Teacher Resources

           1.  The Texas State Historical Association
      
                The Texas State Historical Association is the oldest learned society in the state, having been founded in 1890.  The TSHA maintains an active department of education that sponsors a wide variety of activities for teachers and students interested in Texas history.  The above link directs users to the extensive fourth and seventh grade lesson plans maintained online by the historical association.  These lesson plans are keyed to TEKS and may be searched by grade level, topic, time period, or the particular content of TEKS.
               
           2.  The Texas Historical Commission

                The Texas Historical Commission is the agency of the State of Texas charged with superintending and coordinating historic preservation, historical site management, and fostering the study of Texas history.  It has an online lesson plan site dealing with the nautical archaeology that relates to the discovery and maritime excavation of the Sieur de LaSalle's ship La Belle.


           3.  The Texas Archeological Society
               
                The Texas Archaeological Society was founded in the late 1920s and has become one of the preeminent state-based organizations in the United States dealing with that subject.  It publishes her Journal, sponsors a variety of field schools, and maintains an extensive website that provides numerous resources for teachers of Texas history, including lesson plans, bibliographies, and other resources.
               
           4.  Center for American History

                The Center for American History is a division of the University of Texas at Austin.  It is an important repository for collections of archives, manuscripts. and books that constitute one of the best collections for Texas history research in the United States.  It also operates the Sam Rayburn Library in Bonham, the John Nance Garner home in Uvalde, and the historic Wyndale facility at Round Top.  The Center for American History website contains much information of potential interest to Texas history teachers, including lesson plans keyed to some of the collections of letters and papers are housed in the Cnter.

           5.  Frontier Texas (Abilene)

                This facility is a museum located in Abilene, Texas.  It has an active elementary and secondary level education program keyed to the school-age visitor.  It also maintains online lesson plans related to the historical development of the Western frontier in late 19th century Texas.


           6.  Humanities Texas (formerly the Texas Committee for the Humanities)

                This organization is the state-based agency in Texas of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Humanities Texas offers a broad based program of public grants oriented towards projects that will advance the understanding and appreciation of the state's history and culture.  It also maintains the Humanities Resource Center which provides traveling exhibits and other materials  of potential interest to teachers.  Its website, Humanities Interactive, can be reached through the "exhibits and resources" link of its main page.  Humanities Interactive offers the Texas history teacher when a wide variety of lesson plans and classroom activities dealing with various aspects of the state's history.               


           7.  TENET

                The Texas Education Network is maintained at the University of Texas in Austin.  It contains links of interest to administrators, teachers, and student of all subjects. It does provide bibliographical links to teachers of Texas history.
     
       C.  College and Universities with Texas History Teacher Resources

             Various colleges and universities in Texas are producing teacher resources, including lesson plans, and in the process are developing increasingly elaborate Internet sites which provide significant assistance to history oneteachers engaged in lesson planning.  Many of these projects are of recent vintage and are taking full advantage of the Internet as a communication tool between the higher education community in Texas and teachers throughout the state.

           1.  Texas Tides, Stephen F. Austin State University

               The Texas Tides project is a program of the Ralph Steen Library at Stephen F. Austin State University.  Using a variety of grants, the Texas Tides project has undertaken a large digitization project designed to place online many important resources of Texas history, with special emphasis on the eastern part of the state. This website contains an array of fully developed lesson plans keyed both to the fourth and seventh grade levels.

           2.  Portal to Texas History, The University of North Texas

                The Portal Texas History is a digitization project maintained by the Willis library at the University of North Texas.  Like the Texas tides project, it is also engaged in the ongoing digitization of documents important to Texas history which are being placed all online.  Additionally, the Portal to Texas history a wide variety of resources of interest to the teachers of the fourth and seventh grade Texas history, including fully develop lesson plans that in many cases are keyed to its digitization activities.
 
           3.  Texas Beyond History, UT-Austin
               
                Texas Beyond History is a large website maintained by the College of Liberal Arts of the University of Texas at Austin.  It provides links to a large number of teacher resources dealing most academic subjects found in the public school curriculum including the arts, sciences, humanities, and the social sciences.  The section of its website dealing with Texas history contains a number of useful lesson plans and other teacher-oriented resources.

           4.  Center for the Study of the Southwest, Texas State at San Marcos

                This facility is one of the federally designated regional study centers in the United States.  It maintains a wide variety of activities dealing with the historical study of the southwestern region, including important teacher resources such as its extensive website dealing with the Cabeza de Vaca expedition.


           5.  SAGE, Texas A&M University

                The Scholastic Assistance for Global Education is an activity and website sponsored by the Center for International Business Studies of the Mayes School of Business at Texas A&M University in College Station. The SAGE website contains many of the lesson plans which have been published over recent years in the Social Studies Texan, which is the Journal of the Texas Council for the Social Studies.
               

III.  Useful Sites for Texas History Information of Interest to Teachers

                The two sites below are important resources for the teachers of Texas history.

        A. The Gateway to Texas, Texas State Historical Association

                The Texas State Historical Association, in addition to its lesson plans noted above, maintains a comprehensive Internet gateway that provides individuals interested in Texas history access to wide array of valid academic sources about the history of the state.  Most important among them is the Handbook of Texas, which is an extensive and detailed historical encyclopedia regarding Texas history.


        B.  Armadillo Server at Rice University

                This site was a teacher resource jointly sponsored by the Houston Independent school District and Rice University.  It is no longer active and has ceased to be up-to-dated.  However, its utility is such that its creators have left it online and accessible because of its continuing utility to history teachers.

IV.    Lesson Plan Project at Austin College

                This presentation is a result of the Andrew Mobley Collaborative Research project at Austin college that has permitted a group of faculty members and students to survey online resources for Texas history lesson plans in addition to creating additional online lesson plans dealing with Mexican-Americans in Texas.  The three links below provide access to the activities of the center and its lesson plan project, the latter of which was underwritten by a grant from humanities Texas.
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        A. Center for Southwestern and Mexican Studies
        
                This center sponsors a variety of activities designed to highlight the history and historical connections between Texas and the region surrounding it, especially Mexico.  The Center offers summer internships, an Institute for Talented High School Students to study Texas history, and sponsors variety of public programs in the North Texas region.

        B. Links for Teachers

                This is a list of links for those interested in the history and culture of the southwestern region of the United States.


        C. Writing Mexican-Americans into Seventh Grade Texas History

    `         This a is set of lesson plans developed by faculty members and students at Austin College who were involved in this project.