​​​​Atlas Rubicon

​C​urriculum Collaboration through Atlas Rubicon‬‬

This page was originally authored by Stephanie Brook in February 2013.


Atlas Curriculum Mapping Software Atlas is a curriculum mapping software that allows for an educational institution’s curriculum to be shared, analyzed and refined by a team of educators through an online platform. It allows for multiple users to view, edit, analyze and contribute to the different units of study, and to share resources through the online software. Developed in 1989 by Rubicon, Atlas has grown in popularity and is now used by approximately 20,000 schools in more than 120 countries worldwide. ​​​​

According to the SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (2009), "Curriculum mapping was developed after World War II as traditional scope and sequence charts and promoted later by [Dr. Heidi Hayes] Jacobs (ASCD, 1997) as an effective tool that engaged teachers and staff in a collaborative effort to increase managerial control."(p.131) The Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration (2006) defines curriculum mapping as "a process developed... to discern the actual as opposed to the desired curricula being employed in schools."(p.2) This method has been developed by countless schools and school boards, as well as software developers, as a way to more thoroughly examine what we are teaching, analyze it, and find ways to improve it. ​​​​

Atlas curriculum mapping software is an online resource and is highly collaborative in nature, allowing teams of educators to build on their shared understandings of a unit of study as the years go by. New resources can be added, and old ones taken away. Curriculum mapping is often used in schools where teachers are being asked to collaboratively build a curriculum to "support the achievement of each student through an articulated, seamless curriculum"(Truesdale, Thompson & Lucas, 2004, p.10). Atlas achieves this goal, and allows curriculum to truly become a living, working record of the teaching and learning that is taking place in a school.