About AP Worldipedia

Welcome to AP Worldipedia, the free encyclopedia covering the content for Advanced Placement World History. This project is a work in progress, and is being aligned to the curriculum framework for AP World History.

AP Worldipedia began in 2008 as a class project. Using the open source Wikipedia platform, students wrote articles on the Major Comparisons component of the old curriculum framework (the "acorn book"). After each year the database was deleted and the next class began researching and writing the articles again. By 2012 I decided to use my experience as an AP exam grader and question writer to create a more reliable and permanent online source of course content with the Key Concepts of the new curriculum framework serving as an outline. It turned out to be a bigger job than I had anticipated, and is still going on. I continue to write articles here when I can (the birth of my daughter slowed things down a bit) and the end is in sight. I hope students and teachers find this project to be a good supplemental source for the class.

About AP World History

According to the AP World History Course Description) published by the College Board, "The breadth of world history has always posed challenges for AP teachers to create opportunities for deep conceptual understanding for students while addressing a syllabus largely driven by sheer scope. The AP World History course outlined in this course and exam description addresses these challenges by providing a clear framework of six chronological periods viewed through the lens of related key concepts and course themes, accompanied by a set of skills that clearly define what it means to think historically."

"The course’s organization around a limited number of key concepts instead of a perceived list of facts, events, and dates makes teaching each historical period more manageable. The three to four key concepts per period define what is most essential to know about each period based upon the most current historical research in world history. This approach enables students to spend less time on factual recall, more time on learning essential concepts, and helps them develop historical thinking skills necessary to explore the broad trends and global processes involved in their study of AP World History."

Course Themes

The content of this course would be overwhelming were it not organized around major themes and key concepts. As you read and write articles for AP Worldipedia, you should keep them relevant to these themes. The Course Themes are as follows:

1) Interaction between Humans and the Environment-The environment impacts human beings even as human activity impacts the environment. From the earliest discoveries of fire and agriculture, this relationship has been driven by new technologies, migrations of human beings, disease and demographic changes, and patterns of human settlement.

2) Development and Interaction of Cultures -Throughout history, humans have held many belief systems and religions. They have developed philosophies and ideologies, technologies and forms of artistic expression. As societies interact, these aspects of culture adapt, blend or react to one another and often form new and complex mixtures.

3) State-building, Expansion, and Conflict -Humans developed forms of authority, or governance, to bring order and efficiency to their lives. These took the form of tribes or clans based on kinship, empires built by conquest, modern nation-states, and other hierarchical systems. All political systems are formed on the concept of legitimacy and when legitimacy is lost, revolts and revolutions transform the system.

4) Creation, Expansion, and Interaction of Economic Systems -This theme deals with how human beings use their resources and labor to produce and exchange wealth. It includes means of acquiring food, forms of labor, how things are bought, sold, and traded, as well as ideologies about wealth such as capitalism, mercantilism, and socialism.

5) Development and Transformation of Social Structures -All human societies develop assumptions about how human beings are grouped. These are almost always hierarchical, with some classes or castes higher than others. The most basic social structure has always been the family, but kinship, race, ethnicity and economic level are also ways of grouping. Most societies have assumptions about the role of gender also.