Newseum Education Timeline

1997

• April 18: The Newseum opens in Rosslyn, Va. Education of students is a part of the mission from the start; classes are offered daily in designated classrooms. An Teacher Advisory Team of a dozen-plus members is created.

2000

• NewseumED wins The Association of Educational Publishers EdPress Distinguished Achievement Award for its media literacy curriculum Is Seeing Believing ... How Can You Tell What's Real?. 

2002

• March: The Newseum closes to concentrate on building a new facility in downtown Washington. The Education Department continues to do off-site community and school programs during this time.

2007

• October: The Education Department creates a Student Advisory Team to provide feedback on the development of interactive exhibits, videos and educational programs ahead of the Newseum’s reopening.

2008

• April 11: The new state-of-the-art Newseum opens Pennsylvania Avenue to great fanfare. Students invited from D.C. metro area schools groups are first through the doors.

2010

• January: The @NewseumED Twitter account is launched.
• October: Hundreds of educators attend the first Newseum Teacher Open House.

2011

• March: With financial support from the Ford Foundation, the Education Department launches the Digital Classroom on the Newseum’s main website. The education site houses 12 videos from the Newseum galleries and accompanying lesson plans, and is the first attempt to make Newseum content available online to teachers everywhere.

2012

• August: The Digital Classroom posts “Decision 2012,” a set of multimedia resources for teaching about the 2012 presidential election. Decision 2012 is produced in collaboration with NBC Learn.
• November: An additional curriculum developer position is added to focus on multimedia resources, a sign of our commitment to increasing our online offerings for those who cannot visit the Newseum.

2013

• August: The module “Making a Change: The First Amendment and the Civil Rights Movement” launches on Digital Classroom. It features an interactive timeline and map, lesson plans and numerous historic front pages and newsreels.
• October: In response to numerous requests from groups unable to visit the Newseum, Education hosts its first virtual class for students at the University of Cairo via a State Department program. The next month, Education partners with the Orange County (Calif.) Department of Education to teach hundreds of students in their schools long distance.
• November: Education staff co-present at the National Council for the Social Studies annual convention with Mary Beth Tinker, whose landmark student rights case is central to several classes taught at the Newseum.

2014

• March: The “Women, Their Rights and Nothing Less: The First Amendment and the Women’s Suffrage Movement” module launches on the Digital Classroom. Sponsored by the American Association of University Women, it includes an interactive timeline and map, lesson plans and artifacts.
• May: Newseum Education creates its own Facebook page.
• July: Sponsored by Annenberg Learner, Education runs its first three-day Summer Teacher Institute at the Newseum with 24 participants from across the country.
• October: An additional full-time museum educator position is added to offer more virtual classes on a daily basis.
• November: Newseum Education is published in "Teaching the C3 Framework," the NCSS bulletin of 15 model lesson plans on implementing the C3 dimensions in the classroom.

2015

• January: NCSS, the largest subject-area organization for social studies teachers in the country, endorses our civil rights and woman suffrage modules.
• February: Education is now represented on the Newseum operating committee. Barbara McCormack, director of Education, is promoted to vice president of Education.
• March: Echo & Co. is hired to replace the Digital Classroom with a product that improves the online delivery of resources for educators teaching media literacy and the First Amendment freedoms.
• July: The annual Annenberg-Newseum Summer Teacher Institute offers two sessions – novice and advanced – on integrating technology in the classroom. Education pilots running the sessions onsite and online simultaneously.
• October: NewseumED.org is officially launched on the WordPress open-source platform. It replaces the Digital Classroom. As part of the launch, the Education Department is branded as NewseumED and its thematic modules are renamed EDCollections.

2016

• March: The Freedom in the Balance EDCollection launches with a focus on the balancing of civil liberties and public safety. The collection, sponsored by the For Action Initiative and Families of September 11,  includes a quiz and 22 paired case studies that connect historical and contemporary issues.
• April: A special Teacher Open House highlights Freedom in the Balance materials.
• June: The Newseum is named the 2016 recipient of the Education Commission of the States Corporate Award for demonstrating “a sustained commitment to, and investment in, improving public education.”
• August: The newest EDCollection – Election 2016: Stumped!? – is launched to offer teachers tools to make sense of the campaign chaos and raging rhetoric. Sponsored by the American Association of University Women, it includes historical context, artifacts and videos for students to use while discussing election questions that “stump” them.
• September: NewseumED partners with the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to create its first lesson plan in Spanish.
• October: In the one year since the launch of NewseumED.org, the number of registered users and artifacts on the website have more than tripled. The number of lesson plans, activities and worksheets has increased 30 percent.

2017

• February: The “Media Literacy Maven” Facebook Live series launches. Engaging video lessons use relevant and timely examples to help students navigate the proliferation of misleading and fake news stories.
• May: NewseumED curriculum developers work with students at Palo Alto (Calif.) High School to create and pilot the class “Fighting Fake News: How to Outsmart Trolls and Troublemakers.” The class becomes a regular offering on-site and virtually for students and teachers around the world.
• October: The Newseum partners on a media literacy initiative with Facebook. Both the “E.S.C.A.P.E Junk News” and “Is This Story Share-Worthy?” posters are distributed via the social media platform, exponentially increasing the reach of NewseumED’s resources on fighting misinformation.
• November: The National Council for the Social Studies endorses the NewseumED.org website, further recognizing the efforts of NewseumED to provide quality online educational resources.
• December: The Newseum and AAUW partner to launch the Media Literacy Booster Pack, a suite of activities, videos and other resources to help learners tackle issues from recognizing bias and propaganda to leveraging their role as a media contributor.

2018

• January: The reach of NewseumED (through its website and programs on-site and off-site) surpasses 10 million users worldwide.
• May: The Newseum Institute, of which NewseumED is a part, is renamed the Freedom Forum Institute.
• June: The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) names NewseumED one of the best websites of 2018 for teaching and learning.
• October: NewseumED officially launches its newly designed website and new EDCollection, Fact Finder: Your Foolproof Guide to Media Literacy, with support from  The Brin Wojcicki Foundation and Present Progressive Fund at Schwab Charitable.
• November: Our sixth EDCollection, Free Speech Essentials, goes live. Critical debates reveal the foundations, flare-ups and frontiers of this First Amendment freedom. With support from the Charles Koch Foundation.

2019

• January: The Freedom Forum — the creator and primary funder of the Newseum — announces the sale of the building at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. to Johns Hopkins University. The museum will officially close to the public on Dec. 31, 2019.
• August: NewseumED accepts an honorable mention award in Best Practices in Teaching Media Literacy at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications conference. Our entry, one of 26, was based on "The Fairness Meter" lesson plan in our Fact Finder EDCollection.
• September: The NewseumED team and its web development partner, Echo & Co, win a 2019 WebAward for Outstanding Achievement from the Web Marketing Association for the NewseumED.org website. 
• October: We launch Disinformation Nation, a custom-designed site intended to appeal to a broad swath of Americans seeking to improve their ability to recognize and deflect propaganda.
• Dec. 31: The Newseum building at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW  permanently closes to the public.