Nic Taylor

The National History Education Clearinghouse, an online project that brings U.S. history teachers high-quality support and resources, has been launched by Stanford and George Mason University.

The clearinghouse is now available at http://teachinghistory.org.

The U.S. Department of Education awarded the five-year, $7 million project to the universities in partnership with the American Historical Association and the National History Center.

The online project focuses on historical thinking and learning and is designed to help K-12 history teachers become more effective educators, thereby expanding student knowledge of U.S. history and its relevance to their daily lives and future. The clearinghouse provides links to the most informative and comprehensive history content on the Internet. It also provides teaching tools and resources such as lesson plan reviews, guides to working with primary sources and models of exemplary classroom teaching.

The clearinghouse will link to a number of national history education organizations and associations. The website is interactive, allowing teachers to ask questions, comment on topical issues and share information on what and how they teach.

"The National History Education Clearinghouse will put into the hands of any teacher with an Internet connection the highest quality materials for teaching U.S. history," said Stanford education Professor Sam Wineburg, executive producer and senior scholar of the clearinghouse. "We are honored to be part of the digital revolution that is changing history teaching."

The clearinghouse is funded under Teaching American History, a federally funded program created to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge and understanding of traditional U.S. history. The program has funded more than 800 projects across the country since 2001.

"We are thrilled to play such a prominent role in helping K-12 U.S. history teachers and in bringing together the many communities involved in history education," said Kelly Schrum, co-director of the clearinghouse and director of educational projects at George Mason University's Center for History and New Media. "The Teaching American History program and the clearinghouse demonstrate the federal government's dedication to improving history education, and we know that the clearinghouse will continue to improve and educate as it develops."

The website, which is co-directed by Schrum and Sharon Leon of the center and Daisy Martin of Stanford, is organized around seven features: history education news, history content, teaching materials, best practices, issues and research, professional development and Teaching American History grants. The clearinghouse uses the latest advances in digital technology to explore history teaching through interactive images as well as audio clips and videos of classroom teaching and historians discussing primary sources.

Offline support will include a yearly conference, a newsletter and an annual report on the state of history education in the United States.