Georgia Department of Education
Ga Virtual Learning: Ap Us History: Native Populations & European Exploration
AP U.S. History learning module explores the encounter and interactions between European explorers and Native populations in America. Complete set of resources, interactive material, assignments and assessment.
Mariners' Museum and Park
Mariners' Museum: Age of Exploration: Tools of Navigation
Sailors improved on many of the tools used in navigation to help them in their long journeys across an ocean. On this site from the Mariners' Museum, find many of these tools, perhaps in use already in the 15th century, but made even...
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...
Virginia Tech
Digital History Reader: Demographic Catastrophe: Native Population
When Christopher Columbus discovered the New World he and his entourage brought with them not only the views of Europeans, but also diseases of Europeans. This was catastrophic to the natives in the Caribbean Islands and Meso-America as...
National Library of France
National Library of France: The Unknown Sea
An image-rich exposition of visual art that takes the sea as its a theme. Mythology, fantasy, mapmaking, and the history of sailing and marine exploration are all investigated as are fears about the ocean's power, puzzling beliefs about...
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.
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: First European Exploration and Exploitation
Essay on the exploitation and decimation of indigenous peoples as a result of European exploration, settlement, and colonization in North and South America.
Library of Congress
Loc: 1492: An Ongoing Voyage
An exhibit by the Library of Congress supplies diverse facts on the famous 1492 voyage. The exhibition first examines the encounter between the European explorers and the native people. They explore five geographical areas: The Caribbean...
University of Groningen
American History: Essays: Portugal & Spain: Quest for Monopoly in the East
Essay on Spain and Portugal quest for control of trade, exploration and colonization, and their eventual displacement by Northern Europeans.
Pamela Seed
The Art and Science of Fifteenth Century Navigation: Latitude
Chronicle of the changes that occurred in various areas when latitude was identified in 1516. Site includes links to the changes in maps, compass roses, and the science of sailing.
Walled Lake Consolidated Schools
Loon Lake Elementary: Explorers: The Age of Exploration
This Age of Exploration table is an organized, concise overview of famous explorers from the 15th to the 17th centuries.
University of Calgary
European Voyages of Exploration: Geography and Cartography
This site provides information on mapmaking and cartograohy of the early explorers. Includes pictures of maps.
Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum (London): The Endeavour Botanical Illustrations
A series of articles and online exhibits that gives information on the various specimens, plants and animals that were collected and illustrations were then made. Cook led the world's first scientific naval expedition to the South Pacific.
BBC
Bbc: Captain Cook: Explorer, Navigator and Pioneer
A engaging biography of the great British explorer that discusses not only his contributions to expanding the British empire but also his work in the prevention of scurvy. Archived.
Read Works
Read Works: Columbus Was an Explorer
[Free Registration/Login Required] This short nonfiction book passage is about Christopher Columbus and his contributions to exploration. This book in the SummerReads series, intended to work against the summer reading slide, reinforces...
Read Works
Read Works: Columbus Reports on His First Voyage, 1493
[Free Registration/Login Required] Abridged from the full text located at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, this passage provides a primary source and a discussion of Christopher Columbus' first voyage. Paired texts, a...
The Newberry Library
Newberry: Exploration and Encounter: Map 3, Captain Cook and Hawaii, 1778
Map and primary source information provide first-hand account of exploration and encounters between Europeans and Hawaiians. Includes lesson plans for k-12, links to reference material and supplemental resources, and curators notes.
Mariners' Museum and Park
Mariners' Museum: Resources: Age of Exploration
Scroll to the bottom of this page to access activity resources and lesson plans that encourage students to explore an understand the practicalities and difficulties involved in sailing to new places during the Age of Exploration.
A&E Television
History.com: How Portugal's Seafaring Expertise Launched the Age of Exploration
In the 15th century, a small kingdom with a population of approximately 1 million launched the era of maritime exploration that would transform the world. Portugal turned to the boundless Atlantic Ocean as its only outlet to the wider...
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Fordham University: Modern History Sourcebook: Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage 1580
Fordham University provides this primary source document that was written by Sir Francis Drake's Gentlemen at Arms, Francis Pretty. It is his personal records of the voyage Drake took around the world in 1577, which began in the South...
Other
Beyond the Map: Dividing the World: Treaty of Tordesillas
An interesting look at the Treaty of Tordesillas, how it affected Spanish and Portuguese exploration, and how it was ignored by other countries.