- Interactive Civil War Battles Map This wonderful online map was created by Esri, a company dedicated to gathering GIS data and finding innovative ways to display it. This particular map displays the geographic location of Civil War battles all across the United States. There is also a timeline at the bottom of the screen that students can control, which shows more or less battles on the map depending on the timeframe you want to view. On the map, each battle will be marked blue for a Union victory or red for a Confederate victory. Each battle marker will also be certain size depending on its importance. The bigger its significance, the larger its marker. An extremely helpful sidebar provides detailed information about each battle and each battle can be clicked on to read more about it and a link is provided to go to the American Battlefield Trust website for even more information.
- Interactive Civil War Timeline This highly detailed, simple-to-use, and visually appealing interactive timeline was developed by the Springfield-Greene Public Library System of Missouri and the National Park Service. The timeline covers events from 1850-1870 as they relate to the Civil War. As students scroll along, they can click on individual events for a more detailed look. Once click, the event will pop up and fill the screen with a picture and a paragraph or two that will describe the event in greater detail. The timeline is beautiful and simplistic and will greatly help students to understand the order of events in the American Civil War.
- Civil War Interactive Challenge Game This fun and engaging activity was developed by the website Mr. Nussbaum, which is a sit where teachers can find and create fun activities for their classes across all subjects. This particular game has four modes (states, people, battles, and advantages) that all utilize an interactive map of the United States during the Civil War. The game has a timer and point system. Depending on the mode, students must drag and match elements such as portraits of Civil War leaders to the correct side of the war using the interactive map. In the "states" mode, students much match states with their correct factions using the map. The idea is the same with the "battles" and "advantages" modes. Perhaps most helpful of all, a brief paragraph of historical information is provided after each answer. This activity will help to give students a more concrete geographical sense of the Civil War and a firmer sense of which who the main actors were.
- American Civil War Online Simulation In this highly interactive online history simulation, students take on the role of an advisor to President Abraham Lincoln or Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Students face a series of 11 scenarios that were based upon actual historical decisions that each of these leaders had to make during the Civil War. With each scenario, students will be given three options, and they must select the one that they believe each leader would choose. Once the choice is made, the student is told whether President Lincoln/Davis would agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with the advice chosen to give them by the student. Along with this is an explanation of why they would have agreed, disagreed, or strongly disagreed and a brief historical context that explains the decision each of these leaders took in real life. After each scenario is a simple question that tests students' factual knowledge. Students' scenario and factual knowledge answers are combined at the end to give a score out of 100%. This activity is highly interactive and forces students to think critically about historical context in order to understand the type of leaders that Lincoln and Davis were.