My site is EDSITEment  at http://edsitement.neh.gov/ . The National Endowment for the Humanities is partnered with Verizon and the National Trust for the Humanities to create this website.

The site has material on the subjects of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies.  It refers to itself as a treasure trove of high quality material for teachers, parents, and students.

The home page has a lot on it. Almost too much. I actually had to really take time to read all of it to figure out what it was all about and how I should navigate around the site. There are monthly features (this month it’s Asian-Pacific Heritage Month), monthly calendars with lesson plans and websites, and many other things just on the home page. I have to admit it was a little overwhelming for a first visit. I wasn’t sure where to start to look around or what to do a search for since all of the subjects are so broad. I decided to try all web sites at the top of the home page to see what was there.  There you can literally check all of the various sites in the website. They are in alphabetical order and there is a brief description of each one and they have colored coded blocks next to them which tell you what part (or parts) of the Humanities they relate to. On the home page almost everything is clickable-text, text blocks, photos, headings.  It’s pretty easy to navigate around. The navigation bar is always the same at the top which made it easy to try something else on another page or jump to another category.

There are sponsored sites, actually partner sites, all of which seem to be government funded educational sites.

I chose to search for information on the Great Chicago Fire. I found drawings and diagrams, an actual letter written by one of the commissioners for the Board of Public Works of Chicago to his brother following the fire, eyewitness accounts, essays, news articles and remembrances. I’m not sure how this would compare to doing a search through Google. You might be able to find all of the information that I found but it would take longer.

The second search was for the Salem Witch Trials. It took me to a Document Archive and Transcription Project. There you can find the actual verbatim transcripts of the legal documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak.  There are maps of the town as it stood in 1692 and others of where the accused lived. There are lists of the people involved in the trials from the accused and their family members to the judges. There are descriptions of their involvement and in some cases there are drawings depicting them at trial.  There are photos of some of the actual buildings still standing as well as memorials and where they are located.

I couldn’t locate a FAQ section even when I used the search. The site map was easy to find and pretty straightforward.  Navigation through the site itself is very easy. What this site does though is take you to outside sites which are not always as navigable.

I definitely think this is a unique site and would not hesitate to use it or recommend it for school projects. It’s very educational and puts many, what I would consider obscure, sites together.  The Salem Witch Trial Site was very different from what I think you normally get as a result on a Google search.  What I learned was that there are so many different kinds of sites out there with very different information.