Discover more than a million resources, create personal collections and educational experiences, and share your work.

Find out more and get started.

The Smithsonian Learning Lab is about discovery, creation, and sharing.

Discover

The thrill of discovery awaits you in the Smithsonian Learning Lab. From the Discovery space shuttle to the Star Spangled Banner to dinosaur fossils, the Learning Lab gives everyone with a desire to learn the opportunity to explore the Smithsonian's rich resources anytime, anywhere.

Learn More

Create

Free your imagination – create personal collections using the Smithsonian's vast resources and add your own resources or those from other sources. Add notes, develop quizzes or create complete lessons or artistic collections, and build upon each for more personal and memorable learning.

Learn More

Smithsonian Staff Picks

What makes you say that? Key Moments in WWII

Using the Project Zero Visible Thinking routine "What makes you say that?," students will investigate two photographs, taken from different angles, of Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and General Yoshijiro Umezu aboard the USS Missouri as they signed the surrender that would officially end WWII.

Tags: world war 2; world war ii; general macarthur; carl mydans; primary source; ww2; japanese instrument of surrender; potsdam declaration; inquiry strategy

Tess Porter

Hirshhorn's Pokémon Go Stops

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has a number of PokeStops (a place in the physical world where you can pick up "items" to play the mobile geolocation game Pokemon Go).

This collection explores the sculpture and architecture at of the stops at the Hirshhorn. Not all of the works listed as stops in the game are still on view. This collection provides information for the stops no longer on view and for other interesting sculptures nearby!

Ashley Meadows

Angles in Motion

Students will first observe the portrait of Martha Graham, and figure out who she is based on what it communicates about her. Then the observation of the angles in her pose will help students create a scale drawing of this piece. This activity combines thinking routines about looking at a portrait with the mathematical concepts of angles and scale.

Created for the National Portrait Gallery Learning to Look Summer Institute, 2016 #NPGteach

Rachel Slezak

Mary & Katy: See, Think, Wonder & Compare

Artful thinking routines to explore, critique, compare and contrast portraits of Mary Cassatt and Katy Perry from the National Portrait Gallery. #npgteach

Micah Haddock