About InquiryForge

What we are working on

World History is a course platform. A unit covers a week of teaching: an introduction, a lesson for each day, and an assessment at the end. Inside a lesson a student meets a reading, an extract from a source, a map or an image, some vocabulary, a few questions to check they have followed it, and a written answer to type. The teacher gets classes, assignments, progress and all of that writing in one place.

Session Board runs the session itself. It is two windows: the board the class sees, which has nothing on it but the lesson, and the control room the teacher keeps in front of them, which drives it. A week is planned once, in an editor that is the board at the size the room will see it.

How we approach the subject

Social studies asks a student to read closely, work out whose account they are holding, and say what the evidence will actually support. Those are habits, and habits need repetition rather than explanation.

So the questions in a lesson are mostly about a source in front of the student, and most lessons end with writing rather than with a score. The software organizes the material and keeps the record. What is worth teaching in a given week is the teacher's decision, and the tools are built to be edited.

Where we are

InquiryForge is small and its projects are deliberately few. World History A is written and published; World History B is being written. Session Board is in use and still gaining features. We would rather do two things properly than announce a catalogue.

Conversations with teachers are genuinely useful to us, whether or not they lead anywhere. If you teach the subject and something here is close to a problem you have, we would like to hear about it.