🔭 Science, nature and the world · 🏫 Classroom tools
Smithsonian Learning Lab
By Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology. Visit Smithsonian Learning Lab
Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.
A free Smithsonian website with millions of digital images, recordings, texts and videos from its museums, plus thousands of teaching collections built by educators. Teachers and students can browse, then build and share their own collections, add questions and quizzes, and assign them to classes. Grade-level collections run from pre-K toolkits for talking with young children to high school units in science, history and art.
Our take: A trustworthy free source for teachers and older students; younger children do best with a teacher-made collection.
| Ages it suits | grades PreK-12 |
|---|---|
| What its terms say about age | Anyone can browse without an account. Under-13s need a parent or guardian to set up an account (verified by email consent), or a school with a Smithsonian agreement can register them. Accounts upgrade at 13. (terms) |
| Price | Free. Free (Oct 2026). |
| Works on | Web |
| Account | A school account |
| Ads | None |
| In-app purchases | None |
| The AI in it | No AI. |
What's good
- Free museum-grade sources
- COPPA Safe Harbor and FERPA certified
- Teachers can assign and track work
- Covers all grades and subjects
Watch for
- Some collections link to outside sites and YouTube
- Millions of raw resources can overwhelm young kids without a teacher's collection
- Teacher-built collections vary in quality
Data and privacy
Certified yearly by iKeepSafe under its COPPA Safe Harbor program and holds the iKeepSafe FERPA badge. Child account data is shared only with service providers who need it or as required by law; Google Analytics collects non-identifying usage data. Read the privacy policy.
Does it work?
The maker's own claims only (used by 500,000+ US educators); the site links its own research page, and we found no independent study.
In the Big Index
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Where these facts come from
- https://learninglab.si.edu/
- https://learninglab.si.edu/help/privacy
- https://learninglab.si.edu/help/faqs
Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.