New Microsoft-created tool helps students visualize historical events over time
Microsoft Research is working to change history education with ChronoZoom, a free, online educational tool that helps users visualize historical events over expansive periods of time.
The recipient of a 2013 SXSW Interactive Award, ChronoZoom allows students and teachers to create their own timelines, projects, and exhibits through an authoring guide. The digital tool also can be used in coordination with a series of new curriculum guides that integrate ChronoZoom technology with traditional teaching resources.
Microsoft Research, in partnership with the National Council for the Social Studies, the American Historical Association, and the LearnNC program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is blending traditional, paper-based materials with the digital experience of ChronoZoom to create three separate curriculum modules: one on World War I, one on the impact of European Colonization on the Americas, and a third, more general module that helps students learn how to “think historically.”
The curriculum modules are available to all K-12 educators to download and implement in their classroom, and they are mapped to Common Core and C3 Social Studies Standards as well, Microsoft says.
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