According to a study conducted in 1986 known as the First National Assessment of History and Literature, students appear to have an extremely low recollection of the history taught in school. Granted, the study material is well over ten years old, but it is still commonly accepted that students learn popular culture much more easily than history. It is also well known that learning by association is one of the most effective methods of learning. The question remains, "How do we associate the past with the present?"

We found a possible answer in the results of that study from 1986. While students only correctly answered 54% of all history questions, students were able to correctly answer 71.3% of questions relating to maps and geography. This shows that the students were more comfortable with questions of a geographic nature. Taking this idea a step further, students can now associate the past with the present by connecting points in history through maps. We have taken that concept and created a series of maps allowing students to actively learn through a technology that adapts very well to the internet, GIS. More questios about GIS can be found in our FAQ

What's to come?

We are making a major addition to the site. The AP program recently announced a new AP test for the 2000-2001 year, AP Human Geography. We plan on making this curriculum available online for the first time here in 2001. This will be a great opportunity for students wishing to pursue college credit without the AP course available at their schools.

Now that the deadline has passed for the ThinkQuest conpetition, we plan to keep up with technology. If a company derives a better way to express GIS data, we want everybody to benefit. In addition to keeping up with the news and posting it on this site, we will try to provide new opportunities to our visitors. We are currently keeping our eyes on a new data format known as SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) that should be common after the release of the IE and Netscape 6.x browsers. In addition, we would like to see Geofactory Technologies, Santander Espaņa release their software for mapping online. Many great opportunities await the visitors of this site in the future, and we see no reason to stop our focus on GIS once the judging is through.

First of all, the semifinalist sites do not necessarily have original content. In many cases, they have compiled basic knowledge and public (and private) images from around the internet, and even bend the rules by basing large amounts of content on cgi scripts that can be altered after the rules forbid alterations. Thinkquest apparently is more concerned with the presentation of this material, awarding points if the content looks appealing on their browsers (not minding long download times), in a manner that could be considered creative, using such techniques as installing a cgi from another site that allows the page to perform tricks. After all, modern students are more likely to engage in education when the materials appear enjoyable.

Our second flaw was that none of our team members came from different countries, or even different schools. (Strangely enough, the resources of students and the work from each member is not in question as much as the difference in their schools, according to the judging rubric.) We asked assistance from citizens of multiple countries, and were even aided greatly with the contribution of software and scripts.

We believe, however, that the ThinkQuest judges view this site as an attempt of an individual to compile a bunch of technical jargon marketing some data he has created for public download. While this is not the case, and even though we haven't confirmed that this was the view of the judges, we are entering again this year to shape the site with new features like GIS tutorials, 6 translations, games and quizzes, advanced historical information and data querying (such as searching for a country in history), and a beautiful graphical table layout for those of you who have modern browsers. We opted not to do layouts this time because we didn't want to withhold data from those without modern technology, as suggested by W3C. Also, our biggest score booster, all of this will be done with the help of someone from another country (if she agrees... we are asking someone from Ukraine.)

Please make use of this site in the time being. We would love to be of assistance.

Recognitions

Our site has been listed on the German site, Historical Maps Index. This is a great start to integrating our resources onto the web.

The last time we checked, ArcExplorer was not available for Macintosh. However, if you know you can use GIS data on your Mac and would like to obtain GIS data in stuffit files instead of zip files, you should contact us.