Electronic Resources

To increase efficiency, avoid duplication and provide consistency, The Peopling of America will establish a comprehensive tiered database to house generic U.S. history and civics information. Visitors to the generic database site will have access to broad categories of information on topics with general significance to the teaching of history and civics. For example, topics will include information on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, summaries of important court cases with majority and minority opinions, and lists and biographies of presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress and Supreme Court justices. The database will not contain, however, interpretations of events or individuals.

To obtain this generic information, the national organization will use different sources, including government archives, the records and publications of national historical, ethnic and cultural organizations, contemporary news and educational media and the input of history and civics scholars. In addition, it will draw on information covered in published master’s and doctoral theses. The Peopling of America will also examine social studies and civics-related sites on the Internet, such as those detailing people, places and events and U.S. and world locations; sites for government agencies; organization sites; and sites identified by various search engines. However, because too much information on the Web is inaccurate, unverifiable and/or politically biased, these data sources will be vetted prior to any information being included in the database. In addition to developing these generic resources itself, the national organization may choose to acquire and modify them from reliable institutions.

The Peopling of America will also create tiered grade-level Web sites for each state and the District of Columbia. All information collected within each state—the most important of which will be summarized in the printed resources—will be incorporated into the database for each state’s Americans All^® program. In this way, Americans All^® will have created the largest and most inclusive electronic database on the social, cultural, economic and political contributions of all groups peopling our nation. The national organization will allocate funds to fully support each state’s development of its database.

The state-specific resources will contain each state’s political history as well as the history of all its ethnic and/or cultural groups. The state department of education, or its designee, will certify the authenticity of the information.

The rich variety of ideas, perspectives and experiences to which minority and nonminority students are exposed in a school setting, as well as the cross-cultural interactions they experience, are essential to students’ ability to function in and contribute to this increasingly diverse nation.

The content of the state resources will fully support each state’s standards and curriculum frameworks. Information within the state’s database will be “keyed” to the scope and sequence of how history and civics are taught and can be used to meet state and national testing requirements. Schools can download electronic resources to update, supplement or, in some cases, replace textbooks no longer meeting their needs. The national organization will fund researchers and editors to help prepare the state-specific electronic databases. The copyrights to all state-created materials will remain with the original sources. Americans All^® will serve as the hosting entity for this information.

The state’s education system will need to support the state program coordinator in obtaining copies of state standards, curriculum frameworks, teacher lesson plans, exam questions and research materials to incorporate into the state-specific databases. This will be accomplished by direct communication with retired teachers and, with prior approval from the school principal, with current teachers. It is also anticipated that the state will receive assistance from local chapters of existing teacher organizations, such as NEA, AFT and NRTA.

Americans All^® generic and state-specific resources will be available in both HTML and PDF formats. The resources will be organized in pyramid fashion; a summary of the topic will appear first, followed by more in-depth information on the topic at each subsequent level. All data will also be organized by grade level and will contain as many “keywords” as possible for cross-referencing purposes. A list of contents and alphabetical and subject indexes will guide users on how best to use the resources. The information will be modified and updated frequently.

The national organization will design a template for gathering both the generic and state-specific resources. Use of this template will improve the consistency of the information collected and simplify the process of uploading the data to the program's Web site.

Once the state-specific data has been gathered, verified and coded by the state Americans All^® program, the following procedure will be followed.

• The history and civics information collected by each state will be incorporated into its respective database. The Americans All^® editorial staff will aggregate the information into various levels—primary, secondary and tertiary—so each user can select from the entry as much information as is required to meet his or her needs. State interpretations of the data will appear with the entry. It is reasonable to assume that a major event such as the Civil War will bear a much different interpretation and require different course time depending on the state in which it is taught. Yet, in this manner, students, teachers and parents will have the opportunity to learn about the various interpretations of American history and civics topics.

• If more than one state provides information on a non-state-specific topic, the national organization will review the information to determine whether it can be consolidated into a single, more complete entry that can be incorporated into the generic database. Individual interpretations of the topic will remain part of the state-specific databases. If more than one perspective is presented on a topic, a summary of these perspectives will appear in the generic database with clear annotation on their source. By incorporating all data into the generic database, a student or teacher can search for specific data not covered by his or her state’s database, rather than having to individually check all other state-specific databases to find the information.

• Each state-specific database will have lesson plans and test questions compiled by the state’s own experts, and the most effective of these will be incorporated into a special database for participating schools. This will make it easier for teachers to search for other ways of teaching a topic without having to visit all the other states’ databases.

• The only content the Americans All^® generic database will include is content that has been certified by, and is in use in, at least one state’s education system. Information that is inconsistent with accepted instructional guidelines will be separated, enclosed within a firewall and tagged as “read only”; users cannot download, edit, copy or forward this information. Parents, teachers and system administrators will have the ability to restrict access to this information.

• An appropriate individual within each state’s Americans All^® program will be able to modify his or her state’s database, but only the national organization will be able to modify the generic database. Once a change is made to the state’s database, a copy will automatically be forwarded to the national organization for review prior to incorporating the change into the generic database, if applicable.

An electronic database, supported by related print materials, affords the opportunity to acknowledge and present history and civics resources from multiple perspectives, contributing to inclusiveness and a sense of shared heritage. This verifiable and comprehensive resource will enable educators to teach the history and the social, economic and cultural value of our nation’s diversity as well as meet state curriculum standards and testing requirements and prepare students to become responsible citizens, productive employees and educated consumers.

The knowledge base that will be created will become increasingly valuable in the years to come, as our changing demographics are producing a more diverse student and national population. In addition, this electronic learning tool is well suited to serving a mobile society and to documenting the United States’ historical relationships with the rest of the world.