Welcome to the American Migrations Project, a resource for teaching and research about African American and Latino migrations that have shaped American history. Through this project, researchers, K-12 teachers and university faculty work together to create curriculum for teaching and learning about these migrations, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an online resource in the classroom.
GIS historical census maps enable students to visualize population patterns as they change over time, and can be powerful tools for building spatial reasoning skills. Historical census maps can be used to develop deeper understandings of African American and Latino American history, making it possible for students to ask and answer their own questions about everyday people whose movements have shaped our shared history.
Educators at different grade levels – from 6th grade through college – are developing new ways to teach historical thinking and spatial reasoning. This research focuses on the ways GIS technologies can support these kinds of learning, helping us develop better curriculum and assessments for teaching with data visualization tools like GIS.
Over the next five years this website will share curriculum units for K-12 and undergraduate social science projects studying these American Migrations, along with links to online, classroom-ready GIS census data tools. It will also share current research on spatial reasoning, historical thinking, and GIS technologies. Please browse the resources on this site, and contact us if you would like to share other resources or be part of the work we are doing.