What is Mesolore?
Advanced Placement World HistorySpringbrook High School Silver Spring, Maryland
Mesolore, the course materials produced by The Mesolore Project, aims to enhance the classroom experience with its interactive and interdisciplinary design. Mesolore expands upon the initial CD ROM offering of content on Mesoamerica, Mesolore: Exploring Mesoamerican Cultures. Initially developed at Brown University, Mesolore offers all of the elements of a great learning experience – from lectures by leading experts to debates and tutorials by scholars in the field to exquisitely rendered primary and secondary sources. In addition, Mesolore's materials include a growing number of Sample Syllabi and Lesson Plans as Guides to Classroom Enhancement.
Mesoamerica, the geographical area that today includes central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and northern Costa Rica, is one of the seven places in the world where people, spanning a three thousand year period, independently made the transition from village to urban life. It is also one of the areas of the world that developed a sophisticated writing system as well as a numerical system that included zero. In 1520 when Europeans arrived, massive changes occurred to the area. Mesolore's materials focus on the before and after of the European encounter.
Mesolore's dynamic, interdisciplinary approach to pedagogy enlivens the teaching and the student's learning of world history, Spanish language and culture, art history, anthropology, archaeology, earth science and even algebra.
Mesolore materials are comprised of primary and secondary sources. These include Mixtec codices, a Spanish-Mixtec Vocabulary, tutorials, maps, a bibliography with links to articles, scholars talking about work on Mesoamerican topics, and debates that bridge the Mesoamerican past to the present issues of discerning history from propaganda, gender in the archaeological record, cultural property laws, indigenous rights, among others.
Since its initial publication in the fall of 2001, Mesolore's materials have received broad critical acclaim from university professors and high school teachers across the country.