The speech Nelson Mandela gave when he was released from South Africa's Robben Island prison; articles in African newspapers about the AIDS epidemic; favorite stories of Nigerian schoolchildren: These are some of the primary source materials about Africa on a new Cornell University outreach Web site that's geared especially to third-, ninth- and 10th-grade teachers in New York state.

The Institute for African Development (IAD) at Cornell, which is part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, officially launched its Educator Resources site in December 2003. A subset of the IAD site, the outreach site at http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/africa/outreach/ has links to original documents, current articles in English from more than 19 African newspapers and an enormous array of information about Africa that area teachers will find indispensable.

The aim of the new site is "to enrich young people's educational experience and expand their knowledge and understanding of Africa, its cultures and challenges," said Muna Ndulo, director of IAD. Developing the site, he said, is "in line with Cornell's outreach mission and is an opportunity to work with teachers to contribute to the availability of better teaching materials on Africa."

IAD program coordinator Jackie Sayegh and assistant program coordinator Jackie Cervantes wanted to make the site especially useful to New York state teachers, they told Andrea Volckmar, a social studies teacher at Dewitt Middle School in Ithaca, who chairs the social studies curriculum committee for grades K-8 in the Ithaca City School District. Volckmar joined the IAD's outreach board and also put Sayegh and Cervantes in touch with other teachers.

Volckmar said that since the site was launched, she has steered many teachers to it and, most recently, a parent home schooling her third-grader who called asking for resources on Africa.

"One unit of study for third-graders in New York state is continent study on Africa – how geography affects people's way of life," said Monica Lang, who teaches second and third grade at Ithaca's Belle Sherman Elementary School. "A problem for teachers has been there's no one place to get good resources that are age specific." With up to six lessons plans a day to prepare, Lang said, most teachers simply don't have the time to do extensive searches on the Web for material. "The staff at IAD went out of their way to align the new site with the needs of the school district," said Lang. "They took our input seriously and put in all the things I was hoping to find."

"We're always looking for images and voices that give us a fuller picture of Africa. The IAD Educator Resources Web site is right on the mark in terms of the kinds of thing we'd like to use," said Colleen Ledley, a global studies teacher at Ithaca High School who also advised on the site.

Links on the site are grouped by titles found in the ninth- and 10th-grade New York state global studies and geography curricula. For middle and high school, the site offers links to, and information about, Africa's global interactions from 1200 to 1650, Africa and imperialism, the Cold War, the United Nations, ethnic tensions, independence movements, apartheid (including excerpts from Mandela's autobiography), economic issues, the environment, epidemics and women's movements, as well as information on specific African countries.

Under the site's topics for third-graders are links to information on African arts and crafts, stories and languages (including a rich selection of stories from Nigeria), nature and wildlife, games, children from a range of African countries and links with primary and secondary school Web sites in Botswana, Ghana and Malawi.

Art and images of Africa linked to the site include, among other things, photographs of urban scenes and sophisticated architecture, intended to overturn stereotypes about the continent. The site's Art in the Classroom section links to information about Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art's OMNI (Objects and Their Makers: New Insights) program in which art objects from Africa are part of learning kits made available to area schools. The site also lists teacher training workshops by Einaudi Center area programs, including one this Feb. 6 on migrations as a force in global change (for information, see http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/conf/2004/issi/ ).

The outreach Web site also is targeted at people interested in advanced studies on Africa, and teachers in Africa seeking classroom resources about the continent. IAD staff and advisers hope the site eventually will serve the widest community possible, connecting organizations internationally, said Sayegh at the Dec. 20 launch reception for the Web site. Welcoming visitors to the site, she quoted Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania: "A new road extends a man's freedom only if he travels upon it."

For more information, contact the IAD at (607) 255-5499 or (607) 255-6849 or ciad@cornell.edu .