America’s Great Depression: www.ametecon.com/gd/gdoverview.html

It did not take a great deal of browsing to determine that this site was biased. The author, Bradley Hampton uses this site to express his beliefs about what did and did not cause the great depression and who and who was not responsible for pulling America out of it. Hampton goes into great detail about how government intervention in the economy was the reason for the stock market crash. He also talks about how FDR really did very little to help the country recover.

Main Causes of the Great Depression: www.gusmorino.com/page3/greatdepression/index.html

The first indication to me that this site lacked credibility was that the author was not clearly stated. I assumed that his name was Gus Morino because that is what is in the web address, but I can’t be sure. Also, there was no link or e-mail option for the web master. The language and style of the information given seemed very informal, although I found no spelling errors, there were a few obvious grammatical mistakes. As far as I could tell, the information given seemed to be accurate, but still I would not recommend this as a student research site. I just was not convinced it was credible.

The Great Depression and the New Deal: www.bergen.org/AAST/projects/depression

I found this site to be credible, it was composed by Robert Sorensen who is associated with a non-profit educational history organization. The information provided by Sorensen was way over my head, I don’t think it would be at all helpful to a middle school student. I don’t even think this would be helpful to a graduate student unless he or she were educated on the ins and outs of macro and microeconomics. The language was extremely technical. I felt as if only a financial advisor could understand his comments on the stock market crash.

The Great Depression: www.plainfield.k12.in.us/hschool/web/html

This site provides information in a clear, easy to use manner with a readability level appropriate for a middle school student. This page is designed by members of the history department at Plainfield I.S.D. A list of resources is available with links to bibliographies, documents, photo galleries and more. The site is free of spelling and grammatical errors. The links seemed to be current and the site was last updated in February 2003. At the end of the site there is even a webquest for students to participate in. It is a very good quest in which the students become a mother, father, brother or sister living in the depression. They are assigned a job (if they are lucky), a small budget and a description of their living conditions. Students get a glimpse into the lives of great depression survivors.