Place-Based Education

Engaging students in their own communities through local history, local culture and the local environment. An initiative of the Massachusetts Studies Project at UMass Boston.

February 15, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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Footnote: Web 2.0 site

"FOOTNOTE" is organized around primary source historical documents, many (most?) from the U.S. National Archives.  The site is well-organized, and offers a number of standard, useful Web 2.0 features:

    • View and enlarge documents to discover hidden clues.
    • Print documents to read later or add to your scrapbooks.
    • Save documents to your Footnote Gallery.
    • Search or browse all indexes on Footnote
    • Create your own member page about histories, showcase original source documents, collaborate, or use it as a digital notebook.
    • Share any document you find.
    • Add People, Places, Dates & Text within any document, which then become searchable.
    • Upload any image from your computer that you want to share with others.

The service costs $99 / year; there is no information on the site about educational pricing.  I wrote and asked them about this, and will let you know if/when I hear back.   Visitors to NARA facilities get free access to the site, and supposedly the records will be available for free on NARA’s Web site (http://archives.gov) in five years.

February 5, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience

In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience presents a new interpretation of African-American history, one that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds. Of the thirteen defining migrations that formed and transformed African America, only the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trades were coerced, the eleven others were voluntary movements of resourceful and creative men and women, risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment. Their survival skills, efficient networks, and dynamic culture enabled them to thrive and spread, and to be at the very core of the settlement and development of the Americas. Their hopeful journeys changed not only their world and the fabric of the African Diaspora but also the Western Hemisphere.

February 2, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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Evoca – new tool for oral history

Evoca is an online system (free for 60 minutes, monthly fee for 200 minutes) that allows recording, saving and searching digital voice messages.  It’s used for many purposes, but the website includes a page devoted to oral history.

From the website:

Evoca enables oral historians to:

  • Record and store an oral history project in one place.
  • Preserve existing recordings in digital format.
  • Search audio recordings – the results will actually pinpoint the word you are looking for!
  • Transcribe interviews
  • Translate interviews
  • Spread histories around the world!

January 15, 2007
by Joanne Riley
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Bland County History Archives Project

Bland County History Archives Project, created by the students of Rocky Gap High School, Rocky Gap, Virginia.  Oral histories and their transcipts, cemetery record databases, images, life narratives, special exhibits and more.

"The Rocky Gap High School Oral History and Technology Project is place based education. It is grounded past, present, and future in this place, Bland County, Virginia. The history, the culture, the technology, the writing skills, and the organizational and managerial lessons are all rooted in this place, in these mountains.

The project is a unique blend of tradition and technology. Technology is the lure to bring students to their community history through the stories of its citizens. However it is these stories that give content for the technology to organize, manipulate, and publish. The process gives a student sense of place and thus of himself.

The purpose of this part of the Archives is to help teachers or community members initiate similar projects. The links to the right will show how this was done. It will also explain much of the philosophy and thought behind the project.

Rocky Gap students also travel and conduct oral history workshops. A multimedia presentation is available that explains the project.

We plan to have a cd and a short video to share by the end of this school year. "

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