University of Calgary
European Voyages of Exploration: 15th & 16th Centuries
This award-winning website from the University of Calgary's History Department is both impressive and extensive. It focuses on Portuguese and Spanish expeditions of the 15th and 16th centuries (the sitemap provides a good outline of...
Other
Peoples Education: Make Inferences in Science [Pdf]
This online textbook selection focuses on how scientists make inferences from evidence. Students are given a reading passage about underwater exploration and are asked to make inferences based on the text. The passage is followed by...
Mariners' Museum and Park
Mariners' Museum: Vasco Da Gama
A biography of Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, highlighting his accomplishments to European exploration. Readers will find an accompanying accounts of his voyages and a collection of the tools he and his crews used for navigating the...
Other
Commonwealth of Antarctica: Classroom Antarctica
The focus of this site is Antarctica. Designed for fifth- through eighth-grade students, this site contains detailed lesson plans, learning activities, digital images, and links to related resources.
Library of Congress
Loc: Discovery and Exploration
This American Memory site documents the discovery and exploration of the Americas with both manuscripts and published maps, many of which date from the European Age of Discovery. The site includes 22 map titles and descriptions, as well...
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Renaissance: Exploration and Trade
Detailed introduction on exploration and trade during the Renaissance. Provides an overview of the tools created during the Middle Ages that made such travels by sea possible as well as insight into the types of goods traders sought in...
Teachnology
Teachnology: Explorers Teaching Theme
Enhance teaching about explorers with this collection of resources including lesson plans, activities, interactive websites and more.
PBS
Nova: Krakauer in Antarctica
Jon Krakauer describes what it's like to be in Antarctica and climb its highest mountain.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History: Ocean Planet
Detailed website that was a companion to a 1995 traveling exhibit of the Smithsonian. Links to lesson plans and other educational materials are at the bottom of the page. Enter the exhibition to explore the world of the ocean.
Mariners' Museum and Park
Mariners' Museum: Exploration Through the Ages
A history of the world from the perspective of those who sailed the seas in great waves of exploration, from ancient times through the nineteenth century. Learn about the explorers, their ships, the tools they navigated by, and their...
British Library
British Library: The Search for the Northwest Passage
Detailed third grade lessons help students understand what skills and knowledge were required in order to become an explorer. Includes specific lessons on John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and Henry Hudson.
Curated OER
National Park Service: The Forts of Old San Juan: Guardians of the Caribbean
Visit such Spanish sites in Puerto Rico as El Morro, the fort that provided the keystone to protection of the Spanish Empire that spread across the Caribbean. Many photographs and drawings.
Curated OER
National Park Service: Los Castillos Del Viejo San Juan: Guardianes Del Caribe
A great site for Spanish Exploration. See one of the greatest fortresses in the Western Hemisphere. King Phillip IV called it "The front and vanguard of all my West Indies, and consequently the most important of them all and the most...
W. W. Norton
Norton Anthology of English L Iterature: Sixteenth Century: Overview
Introductory material for a survey of sixteenth-century English literature offering information on the period, its major figures, and influences.
NASA
Nasa Homepage
The official homepage of NASA, the United States' primary space exploration organization.
National Geographic
National Geographic: Geostories: Voyages Across the Ocean
Use this GeoStory in formal or informal instruction to provide information about the voyages of numerous historical navigators and explorers. This GeoStory helps students understand the importance of ocean exploration in contributing to...
California State University
California State University: Curiosity and Exploration
California State University student research into the psychological theories of curiosity and what motivates people to do what they do.
Library of Congress
Loc: Portuguese Mapping the New World
The Library of Congress provides a discussion of the importance of Portugal in the "European Age of Discovery and Exploration." Includes links to related pages within this same Library of Congress site.
Cengage Learning
Literature of Discovery and Exploration
Teaching approach that examines the writings of European New World explorers from the late 1400s through the 1600s. Includes Christopher Columbus, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, Fray...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Neh: Edsit Ement: Other Worlds the Voyage of Columbus
This site has a lesson plan designed for grades 9-12. The lesson plan deals with understanding the culture from which Columbus came, Renaissance Europe, and the culture he found in the New World.
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Fordham University: Modern History Sourcebook: Chronicles of the Incas, 1540
This site from Fordham University "provides quite a lot of information about the Incan economy--a redistributive typical of all early civilizations."
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Fordham University: Modern History Sourcebook: How I Found Livingstone, 1871
This site from the Fordham University provides a primary account of Sir Henry Morton Stanley's first meeting with Dr. Livingstone.
University of Chicago
Cara Virtual Tour: Welcome to Antarctica!
The Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica takes you on a tour of New Zealand, McMurdo Station, and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station, all part of a virtual tour of Antarctica. Lots of pictures and a relaxed style...
The History Place
The History Place: American Revolution
The History Place provides this timeline broken into six different sections that highlight the important events from the early European exploration of America through to the United States becoming a country. Features include informative...