Mason has been awarded a contract — valued at $7 million if fully funded over five years — by the U.S. Department of Education to create an online National History Education Clearinghouse. The online project, which will be housed in Mason's Center for History and New Media (CHNM), will focus on historical thinking and learning. It will also help K-12 history teachers become more effective educators and show their students why history is relevant to their daily lives.
Working with project partners Stanford University, the American Historical Association, and the National History Center, the clearinghouse will have both on- and offline components. These web and non-web based resources will be grounded in the latest and most significant scholarship on history and history education, as well as research on best practices in teacher professional development and an awareness of the possibilities and limitations of the digital medium.
The web site will be organized around seven features: history education news, history content, teaching materials, best practices, policy and research, professional development, and teaching American history grants. The clearinghouse will also use the latest advances in digital technology to explore key concepts through interactive images, 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.
December 12, 2007