Selected Folklife & Oral History in Education Webography

Here are some selected Web sites particularly useful to those engaged in K-12 folklife and oral history education. Please send additions and corrections to Paddy Bowman, Coordinator, National Network for Folk Arts in Education, and find links to other regional resources on their Web site.

American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress
Houses thousands of photographs, recordings, and documents. Look for online publications such as Folklife and Fieldwork, a handy guide to planning conducting fieldwork, including model interview and permission forms; A Commonwealth of Cultures, which defines folklife and the work of folklorists; and the Folklife Sourcebook, which identifies academic and public folklorists around the country who can work with educators to identify local traditions and folk artists.

American Folklore Society
AFS has an Education Section that annually awards the Dorothy Howard Folklore & Education Prize to work that most effectively encourages the study and use of folklore and folkloristic approaches in school environments and is named for a pioneer community studies educator. Also find links and annual meeting schedules.

American Memory Learning Page
Teachers from around the country have designed lesson plans as part of their participation in an annual summer institute at the Library of Congress using the large online collections of the American Memory Project, which digitizes thousands of photographs, documents, and recordings.

CARTS: Cultural Arts Resources for Teachers and Students
The Web site of the National Network for Folk Arts in Education links to national and regional resources and provides school project and staff development models, an online folk artist residency, and opportunities for online dialogue.

City Lore
A New York City organization that documents the folklife of the city and works nationally with teachers through the Culture Catalog and Local Learning project with the National Network for Folk Arts in Education. See links to The People's Poetry Gathering and Place Matters.

Crossroads of the Heart: Creativity and Tradition in Mississippi
Find streaming audio, photographs of traditional arts forms, a useful teacher's guide, and an overview of the state's traditional culture.

Louisiana Voices: An Educator's Guide to Exploring Our Communities and Traditions
An extensive Web-based guide developed to help teachers meet standards, use education technology, and incorporate new assessment strategies through folklife and students= investigations of themselves and their community through fieldwork. Although written for Louisiana classrooms, the guide is in the public domain and is adaptable for any region.

Montana Heritage Project
Home of a statewide network of educators and students engaged in community documentation and cultural heritage education with extensive articles and teaching ideas.

My Story Is America's Story
In celebration of the millennium, the National Endowment for the Humanities offers students and families a structure for studying, collecting, and preserving personal histories and mementoes.

National Park Service ParkNet
Stories, places, parks, nature, and education come together on this site.

NEH Edsitement
The National Endowment for the Humanities selects topnotch education Web sites in the humanities.

Oral History Association
The home page offers annual meeting schedule, links, and more.

Masters of Ceremony
For lesson plans and student resources on four folk artists-work and rites of passage.

Public Broadcasting System
Resources include online lessons such as:

*River of Song
Lessons on traditional music up and down the Mississippi River

*The New Americans
On immigration.

*Vietnam: Stories Since the War
Dozens of archived personal stories

*Africans in America
Includes excellent content and oral history collection tips

*Willa: An American Snow White
A companion to Tom Davenport's film by the same name with teacher guide to collecting family histories and studying folktales.

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Find online curriculum such as Borders and Identity about the U.S.-Mexico border as well as kits to order and a link to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, which offers great recordings especially useful for American History and social studies. The newest online guide, Discovering Our Delta, is very useful for student fieldwork projects.

Sounds of History
This "museum module" employs 150 sound excerpts from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and student activities so students may study the sounds of history and of their own communities and learn how folklorists and archivists work. The student section allows individual students to archive the sounds by historical era and theme.

Traditional Arts Programs Net
Find links to local, state, regional, and national folk arts and folklife programs and folklorists working around the country.

Teaching Tolerance
The Southern Poverty Law Center's education magazine and Web site offer lessons on families, migration, tolerance, holidays; free resources for schools; and grant opportunities. A new sister site, www.tolerance.org, invites users to contribute to the Web's largest anti-hate mural and provides teachers, parents, and young people interdisciplinary lesson plans, interactive ways of testing their own bias, taking action, reading and listening to stories, studying media literacy and history.

Western Folklife Center Cowboy Poets on the Internet
Lessons plus lots of cowboy poetry and student radio projects.