I’ve often written about how much I like SAS Curriculum Pathways, a free site with tons of interactive lessons that students can complete and then email to their teacher.

One particularly impressive feature they’ve added to a number of their U.S. History lessons is a task where students have to apply what they learned to a different fictional scenario. They talk about it in a blog post as an element of Bloom’s Taxonomy “apply” level, and it’s also an opportunity for students to “transfer” their knowledge (see The Best Resources For Learning About The Concept Of “Transfer” — Help Me Find More). More specifically, it’s an example of “near transfer” (applying knowledge to a similar situation) as opposed to “far transfer” (applying it in a substantially different arena).

If you’d like to learn more about transfer, check out the previously-mentioned “Best” list, as well as an excerpt from one of my books that appeared in The Washington Post, The real stuff of schooling: How to teach students to apply knowledge.

I’ll also be publishing a series on the topic later this spring at my Education Week Teacher column, which will include an experiment they’re doing – an animated video explaining the issue.