ResourcesWebsites

​Alliance for American Quilts recognizes quilts as works of art and pieces of history with stories to be documented and preserved. Find interviews with quilters and resources for preserving quilts and collecting stories.

American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has many digital collections useful in the classroom plus Folklife Resources for Educators, a portal to many free online curriculum guides.

American Folklore Society (AFS) Folklore and Education Section publishes an annual newsletter for members, who may sign up for ten dollars without having to join AFS. The AFS Children’s Section awards the annual Aesop Prize and Aesop Accolades for English language books for children and young adults in which folklore is central and presented authentically. Find a list of past recipients at www.afsnet.org/?page=Aesop

Bullfrog Jumped in the Classroom provides audio excerpts of children’s songs recorded in 1947 in an online guide for young children by Paddy Bowman and Marsha Weiner.

American Memory Learning Page Teachers 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.

American Routes Folklorist Nick Spitzer, often an emcee for annual concerts honoring NEA Heritage Fellows, hosts this weekly public radio show on the traditional roots and routes of American pop music. Find an archive of past shows featuring interviews with noted roots musicians, including many National Heritage Fellows.

Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Culture supports the Network for Teachers of Local Culture and projects that show how deeply students can reflect about culture and themselves. See the Dane County Cultural Tour and Hmong Cultural Tour, which includes the free downloadable Teacher’s Guide to Local Culture and Kids’ Guide to Local Culture.

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

Culture in Context: A Tapestry in Expression features New Jersey folk artists and art forms organized in the themes of Home, Work, and Community.

Davenport Films Filmmaker Tom Davenport has produced and directed award-winning American adaptations of Grimm Brothers fairytales and folk arts documentaries useful for the classroom. Order films online, find teaching resources, and download a student guide to video production of fairytale adaptations.

Digital Traditions offers South Carolina folk artist profiles from the McKissick Museum collection and online education guides such as Jubilation! African American Celebrations and Row Upon Row: Sea Grass Basketry.

Documentary Arts Producer of the Masters of Traditional Arts website, this Dallas-based organization collects, presents and preserves historically and culturally significant people and places and provides educational resources and programming.

From Cambodia to Greensboro is an online exhibit that traces the journey of Cambodians to Greensboro, North Carolina (see Suggested Student Reading for an accompanying book for grades 3-6).

Folklore and Mythology Resource Guide is an online guide that offers information to users studying folklore and mythology from over 40 resources.

Folkstreams is a video-streaming site built as a national preserve of American folk culture documentaries and offers users extensive background materials for each film. A number of films feature Heritage Fellows. See especially the Educators Portal for lessons for higher grades.

Folkvine gives users video, audio, and text options to explore folk artists of Florida, including bobble-head dolls representing real-life scholars of the state’s traditional culture.

Iowa Folklife: Our People, Communities, and Traditions is an award-winning online multimedia learning guide for all ages with excellent interviewing strategies. A new volume is at www.uni.edu/iowaonline/folklife_v2.

Louisiana Voices: An Educator’s Guide to Exploring Our Communities and Traditions Although written for Louisiana classrooms, this extensive guide is adaptable for any region and includes rational, evaluation strategies, student worksheets, fieldwork guidelines, and dozens of lessons in public domain.

Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education advocates for inclusion of folk arts and artists nationwide. See especially the multimedia virtual artist residencies with five National Heritage Fellows. Also find a library of useful articles for teachers, including the 2009 CARTS Newsletter on the Art of Interviewing, plus links to regional resources and tools for engaging young people in fieldwork and folklore.

National Endowment for the Arts publishes National Heritage Fellows’ bios on the website and includes video, podcasts, photos, and news.

National Museum of the American Indian features virtual exhibits and education guides on its website.

Public Broadcasting System Find useful education guides related to traditional culture for teachers and students. Examples include several featuring Heritage Fellows: The Mississippi: River of Song, where students can investigate music and musicians from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico; and Accordion Dreams which chronicles Tex-Mex conjunto music.

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has online exhibits, education guides, and interview tools such as Discovering Our Delta and the Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide. Find lesson plans for music from around the world found in Smithsonian Folkways Recordings under Tools for Teaching and many recordings by Heritage Fellows.

Vermont Folklife Center supports education through Discovering Community, which provides training and resources to educators, and a series of award-winning children’s books based on stories in the Center’s extensive archive (see Suggested Student Reading).

Western Folklife Center is home of the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and the site features many audio and video segments of the top cowboy poets and musicians and exhibits on western ranching life.

Wisconsin Folks teaches students about folk arts and artists of that state and provides examples of many genres and artists, from fish decoys to dance.