We’ve just put together our first visual representation of how the new education web site will work.  The chart below doesn’t reflect what the site will look like, but how it will function and be organized.

Chart Representing How the New Web Site Will Work

We envision the site with three main components - the lessons, the primary sources (”Records”), and a section in which teachers can create and customize their own lessons for the classroom (”Create”).  All of the lessons on the site will be constructed based on one of the several templates - or lesson frameworks - that will be available.  The templates are represented in the chart in pink.  The National Archives Education Team will create several ready-made, easily accessible lessons for teachers by inserting teachable primary sources into those templates.  That stockpile of National Archives model lessons is represented in blue.

We also wanted teachers to be able to use the web site as a resource to find primary sources and to customize entire lessons for their students.  Educators can look through the collection of primary sources (represented in green) to find documents to print or share with their classes.  Or they can pick out primary sources (green) to populate the lesson templates with (pink) to create customized lessons to use in the classroom, assign to their students, or share with fellow teachers.

Let us know what you think!