Leave a Legacy: Students as Digital Preservationists

Professional development offerings from Teaching with Primary Sources – Colorado Rural Partnership include a number of strategies ready for classroom application. We are eager to see teachers apply their knowledge and understanding to help students in their school will gain a deeper understanding  of history and the complexity of the past and enhance their critical thinking and analysis skills.

Also toward that end, our project aims to help students connect their own lives – and their contemporary and past contexts – to people, places and times far removed from their own.  By considering the historical record as represented in digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress, students can also gain a sense of how they can become preservations of their own personal and local history.  We are excited to support participating educators in helping their students Leave a Legacy.

A culminating project for students whose teachers participate in Teaching with Primary Sources program will be the creation of a digital project that captures life in rural Colorado in the 21st century as well as capturing memories of longtime residents through interviews and documentation of artifacts, records, photos and memorabilia.  Formats for these Leave a Legacy projects can include digital stories, podcasting, digital scrapbooking, and use of tools such as wikis, blogs and other web-based applications. Student work will be archived online for sharing among interested groups and individuals.

To equip teachers to engage their students in the role of historians, ethnographers and journalists to create these digital records, professional development offerings at the Advanced Application level will include learning opportunities in these skills, starting Spring 2008. Topics include planning and interviewing, capturing and digitizing, compiling and polishing.

Those who have participated in the Essentials Exploration workshop series can begin their Advanced Application workshops in spring and summer 2008 this year, with opportunities for teachers to implement them and submit student work in fall 2008.  Additional dates will be set for the 2008-2009 school  year.  Watch for details coming soon.

Please note: if representatives from your school are interested in participating in this exciting project, please make sure you read about the entry point into the TPS program, Essentials Exploration, and contact us to get involved today!