This webinar focuses on the enduring importance of the Indian Ocean in world history as a maritime space and theater of global trade and cultural exchange. Susan Douglass, K-14 Education Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, guides participants as they learn how to use teaching resources about the Indian Ocean to bridge curricula based on empires and civilizations and curricula built around global eras. Focusing on actual people and on material and non-material culture – such as travelers of all kinds, goods, technologies, documents, and archaeological finds – we examine patterns of continuity and change in a pivotal region that is as relevant today as when people first migrated out of Africa along its shores.