RESOURCE: The Simpsons Archive (www.snpp.com)

One of my plans for this blog is to slowly (very slowly…) go through and review the seasons of The Simpsons for their educational opportunities. I personally use tons of clips from the show in my lectures throughout the year. For someone like me who is a Simpsons junkie this is fairly simple. I can proudly (sadly?) quote just about every line from every episode from the first 10 seasons and pretty well from the next five too.  However, even I have had life catch up with me. The last five seasons or so I simply have not kept up.

There is, however, an answer! The Simpsons Archive located at www.snpp.com is one of the best resources for teachers looking for media I’ve ever found. In short it is a searchable Simpsons episode guide.  There are quite a few of these online but none that I’ve found are nearly as comprehensive. You can type in any word or topic you want and the descriptions are thoroughly searched (the search bar is hidden at the bottom of the page.)

Perhaps even better are the user generated lists under the FAQs, Guides, and Lists tab.  There is, for example, a list of all references to American presidents ever to appear on the show at http://snpp.com/guides/presidents.html. This list alone is many pages long.  There are also lists for religion and music references on the show among many, many others. Clicking on the individual episode will tell you what season it appeared in as well as the episode title making it very easy to hunt down the desired DVD.

So, if you’re looking for that one little video clip to spice up a lecture or one to really close one out memorably check out this great resource.