By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor, OER Project Team At this point in the school year, you and your students may be about to embark on the history of the world wars or maybe even the Cold War. Both are pertinent topics, providing valuable background (a...

By Bennett Sherry and Trevor Getz, OER Project Team The United States funds proxy wars against authoritarian and communist regimes. A Russian leader threatens nuclear retaliation. The US, Russia, and China build elaborate alliance systems agains...

From the start of World War I in 1914 to the end of the Cold War in 1991, the world experienced almost a century of continuous global conflict. While the end of each of these major conflicts of the twentieth century was celebrated as the potential en...

What Did the Ancients Give Us? Many students are unaware of how much our modern world owes to the ancients. But the innovations of ancient societies gave us things such as concrete, the structure of government, makeup, calendars, geometry, and so muc...

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor The legacy of the ancient world is very much alive in the minds of people everywhere. We offer as proof the number of people who visit ancient ruins each year: The ancient Maya ruins of Chichén Itzá in ...

Comparison: Women's Suffrage Around the World The experiences of women throughout history differ across regions and time periods. But in comparing these narratives we can understand how common social expectations and challenges were similar regar...

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor When students are thinking at the large scales of Big History and world history, they can easily conclude that human history is a story of constant progress. But progress isn’t a straight line; there can be obst...

By James Damico, PhD I'm excited to share some key insights and a practical instructional strategy for creating climate champions in your classroom. Key Insights The 3-D approach – viewing students as detectives, delegates, and doers - provide...

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor We owe a great deal of our modern knowledge about stars to a group of late-nineteenth-century computers. You may be thinking that the use of multiple computers that long ago would be impossible, since the first comput...

After the Big Bang, our Universe was hot, dense plasma. For the first 200 million years of its existence, the Universe was in the Dark Ages. The formation of the first stars made our Universe much more complex and these stars became the engines of li...

Humans have been making maps for thousands of years. In general, maps have gotten more detailed, more complex, and more precise over time. Today, you can find all sorts of maps, from maps depicting the effects of climate change to a map of a theme pa...

By Bennett Sherry, OER Project Team “A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.” ...

By Annette O’Boyce As you sit down to grade a stack of essays, ever wish you had a few rubber stamps with certain handy phrases on them? “Add more evidence”; “that’s not a complete sentence”; or “cite your so...

By Trevor Getz, OER Project Team It’s inevitable: The world changes. One generation follows another, each with its own technologies and modes of communication. Right now, many of us are thinking about artificial intelligence (AI), and the trans...

The conversation about using AI in the classroom is evolving. Recognizing that AI has already become commonplace in many classrooms, teachers are exploring ways they can use the technology to help students think critically and creatively. In this les...

Students interact with a variety of claims every day, from claims their parents and teachers make to claims that they see on social media, in movies, or in the news. And since history is all about making assertions—backed by evidence, of course...

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor, OER Project Team If you happen to have a TikTok account to keep tabs on your kids (I can’t be the only one, right?) or maybe to spend some time zoning out after grading essays, then you may have stumbled upon c...

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor
Louisiana, USA

Our students are continuously bombarded with information from a variety of sources that can be contradictory and thus confusing. In addition, they’re exposed to an alarming amount of misinformation and disinformation. How do we help students make sense of it all so that they can make informed decisions about some very serious—and potentially life-changing—issues?…

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor It’s that time of year again: the countdown to the final day of school. Maybe you're reading this while helping students wrap up final projects, proctoring exams, or tackling the grading that stands between you ...

Trevor Getz, OER Project Team Picture this: You’re a Viking, struggling to eke out a living on the shores of Greenland as a glacier slips closer to your house each year. You’re an Italian musician, and you’re holding one of the fin...

Fellow educators, Having been a part of the OER Project as both a teacher and staff member, I know firsthand how powerful the collaboration between classroom educators and OER Project materials can be for student learning. When I took the helm as dir...

By the OER Project Team Climate change will affect every part of our lives, from health care and food systems to business and governance. An understanding of climate change and how we can respond to it is critical knowledge for the next generation of...

By Molly Sinnott When you’re looking for a new coffee maker, you look to see what other consumers have said about the product, right? Is it intuitive to use? Is it built to last? And perhaps most importantly, does it make good coffee?  So ...

By Dr. Deb L. Morrison  Do you want to teach about climate change but worry about how parents may react?  You’re not alone.  Research tells us that approximately 30% of all teachers are concerned that parents may complain if thei...

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor  We live in a world that bombards us with data. News organizations include charts and graphs as evidence to support their arguments. Politicians haul out poster-size charts when they debate bills. You can even si...