DocsTeach vs History Quest

DocsTeach is a free interactive teaching website built around primary sources in the National Archives holdings. Its collection includes thousands of letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, and videos. Teachers can create activities by selecting a tool and sources, then customizing instructions. Activity formats include document analysis, discussion, compare and contrast, zoom and crop, sequencing, mapping, and interpreting data. Students can submit and save responses for a teacher to view in My Students’ Responses, or send responses by email. Teachers can share activities to Google Classroom, where students can turn in their work through its button. For lessons using other materials, teachers can upload JPG, PNG, GIF, or JPEG documents and images up to 8 MB per file. The redesigned site supports exploring and creating activities on computers and tablets, and students can turn in work through the DocsTeach App for iPad. A free account costs nothing and allows users to create, save, and share activities and primary sources, and access hundreds more educator activities. Creating an account requires a name, email address, and password.

History Quest is a free quiz game for Android and Windows that tests history knowledge and introduces players to periods they may not have studied. Its current release has over 4,000 multiple-choice questions in six programs, each arranged into eight units. The subjects are Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the British Middle Ages, the British Empire, Christian Europe and the Spanish Empire. History Quest mode scores speed and difficulty across a program; Knowledge Medal mode concentrates on one era. Units have recommended short readings, and Knowledge Medal divisions include reading assignments. After the app and books are downloaded to a tablet or laptop, the game works without internet access. Players can email an encoded progress report to friends or instructors without putting scores on a public leaderboard. They can also post scores to topic leaderboards or use a group name for a private leaderboard. The maker describes it as suitable for teens, young adults, homeschoolers, independent learners and history enthusiasts of any age. The app is free, and donations to Heritage History are optional.