Depending on access to classroom technology, divide students up in order to ensure that each student or group has access to a tablet or computer for this online activity.

If you have not already done so, introduce your students to the Gold Road Map using the detailed instructions and student handouts on How to use The Gold Road available through the Digital Toolkit. Once online, ask your students to read or listen to the Welcome Message on the site in order to answer the question Why is this online map titled “The Gold Road?” and complete page 1 of the Why the Gold Road Question Sheet 

Allow students to explore independently or in small groups using and navigating the tools on the site. They should respond to the question on page 2 in the handout using evidence from their map quest to support their answers.

• Note that depending on the size of display students may have to navigate or toggle to see the search bar on the left and the “View Trade Routes” option on the right. 
• Encourage students to click all three time periods, the trade routes button, and the trade items button.
• When layered appropriately students should be able to see routes similar to the image found here.

As you circulate amongst the students or as you review their findings, you may want to use the answers and tips below to extend and develop the class discussion further. 

• Where is gold found? Almost all the gold was sourced from streams and rivers in the savanna (forested region) and the rivers where it was moved with water.  If students have not yet used the Landscape filter you may encourage them to turn that on as an additional tool so that they are able to observe that the Senegal and Niger rivers play a role in the sourcing of gold. Alternatively, also turn on the three kingdoms, to see more specifically the places of Buré, Bambouk, Akan Goldfields, all located in the Savanna region. 
  • You could probe deeper with your students to ask why gold is found in the wetter regions and ask them to research alluvial gold. 
• Who had gold and how did they use it? There are many possible answers for people in the three time periods. You could ask students the following: For Ghana, find Tunka Manin. For Mali, find Mansa Musa I. For Songhai, find Soniy Ali
• Was the gold moved? What places did it go to? 
  • Find the trade items that have gold in them, which was sourced in Africa and discuss how this might have arrived there. Help students deduce that gold was known to Europeans by showing them items such as the Gold Leaf textile in Spain or  the Catalan Atlas image of Mansa Musa, famed king of Mali (1280-1337), holding a gold nugget. 
  • Help your students zoom out to get a better sense of the Mediterranean interconnected region and so that they are able to see the trade items located in Europe. 
• Through what routes and how was the gold moved? 
  • Important cities you could highlight are: Timbuktu, Taghaza, Tadmekka Essouk, Sijilmasa, Kumbi Saleh, Awdaghost, Marrakech, and Fez. Further, point to the European cities such as Florence, Italy and Palencia, Spain to show how the gold moved from West Africa to Europe.
  • This is an opportunity for you to turn on the trade routes map if not already done to ask students to name cities that were involved in the trade. 
• Why is Gold important to the kingdoms? To Europe? 
  • Encourage students to emit hypotheses here based on their answers to the above question.