Contextualizing US History

As most people who follow this blog know I have been working for a while with a group in Palo Alto, CA with the goal of contextualizing learning.  Our first "domain" has been to do this with US history and actually some of the readers from this blog have been helping to write the material.  So far we have done all of US history through the Civil War which means that we have about 200 "nodes" of information.

A node is a entity that would be studied such as Andrew Jackson, or the spoils system or the Trail of Tears.  For each we have a 150 word description, a map, a timeline location, cause/effect and other nodes that are related.  We call our site "ContextU" and do so because we believe that the more one contextualizes learning the better learning retention will be.  So below are the four sub-domains of learning (and the Gilded Age will be out in mid December.

• American Revolution
• The New Nation (Washington-Jackson) 
• Causes of the Civil War
• The Civil War