Mansa Musa

Hi Melissa Nowotarski !

I haven't used this lesson in particular, but a good wrap up of this would be this OER article by Trevor Getz on The Sahel: The Empire of Mali.  Another thing I do is to show my students the entire Catalan Atlas instead of the small part that is shown with just Mansa Musa as a contextualization activity and to see what the students can conclude about Mansa Musa/West Africa from just the map. 

Bram Hubbell, who has presented OER Project PD, also has a great blog post with more resources on teaching W. Africa for Unit 1 here. 

Hi Melissa Nowotarski !

I haven't used this lesson in particular, but a good wrap up of this would be this OER article by Trevor Getz on The Sahel: The Empire of Mali.  Another thing I do is to show my students the entire Catalan Atlas instead of the small part that is shown with just Mansa Musa as a contextualization activity and to see what the students can conclude about Mansa Musa/West Africa from just the map. 

Bram Hubbell, who has presented OER Project PD, also has a great blog post with more resources on teaching W. Africa for Unit 1 here. 

The Catalan Atlas is so cool! I wish there was a way to print it out or recreate it for my students to examine. We just used some of the OER maps last week, and zooming in on the maps with their tiny device screens was not very fun. 

Maybe I'll tap an art class to try to recreate it in chalk for next year...

Yes, I do love using it in class, and it's a good way to think about Contextualization for students.

I did try to print out parts of the Catalan Atlas (and other maps) enlarged enough for them to see details than just on their screen, and I laminate them to use year after year.  The students can do a gallery tour and get a better idea of the overall map.  Unfortunately the quality of the print out isn't great, but it's better than looking at their little deviced. 

Having an art class recreate it is such a great idea!  So fun for interdisciplinary collaboration!