Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Lincoln in Kansas – Ideas for a collaborative Kansas student podcasting project

Lincoln in Kansas – Ideas for a collaborative Kansas student podcasting project

Published by Wesley Fryer in history, podcasting, travel on July 23rd, 2009

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This past Wednesday I drove up to Wichita, Kansas, and saw a brochure for “Lincoln in Kansas” in the Kansas visitor’s center located at the rest stop just south of Wichita on I-35. The sponsoring organization is:

… an all volunteer group representing various agencies, museums, historical societies and visitor centers/chambers of commerce working to bring you a comprehensive guide to President Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Kansas in December 1859. Please be paitent [sic] and we will supply you details to make your visit to Kansas more enlightening, fun and Presidential. If you would like to join us or lend your support to our effort please email us at the link below. Support and hosting for this website by the Atchison Community Information Network.

The Kansas visitor’s center was out of brochures to give away, but by clicking the photo above I recorded the website of the project: lincolninkansas.org. On the site, links are provided to the brochure in PDF format. Warning: the PDF file is large (32.2 MB) and the hosting server’s connection is evidently pretty slow or throttled, so be prepared for a long download.

The following is a JPG version of the PDF brochure handout posted to Flickr, which was just 1.9 MB (after exporting with Preview) and is therefore much easier/faster to view online. Someone needs to advise the webmaster of the Atchison Community Information Network who maintains the “Lincoln in Kansas” website about procedures for compressing PDF files before web-posting them. Large file sizes considered, I am still VERY thankful this organization has setup a website as well as a downloadable version of this brochure. The full 1584 x 2448 pixel version is also available.

I think this tour of Lincoln sites in Kansas would make an ideal mobile phone audio tour, like the one now available at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. OnCellSystems and Guide by Cell are two companies providing this type of service commercially.

This would be a great project which could involve students from around Kansas who live in the communities which Lincoln visited in 1859. Students from each community referenced in the above brochure could record a short (less than five minute) audio podcast about Lincoln’s visit to their area and the historic landmarks/sites which he may have seen. Those audio podcasts could be aggregated into a single, downloadable audio podcast channel, made freely available via iTunes and the web and those files could also be made available via a mobile phone guide service like those mentioned above. It would be relatively straightforward to organize this project on a wiki and solicit participation via ePals, the CILC Collaboration Center, Global SchoolNet’s Projects Registry, etc. The project could certainly integrate Google Earth as well, with embedded photos and podcasts in a downloadable/shared KML file.

Perhaps this is a project Storychasers could help facilitate? Any Kansas history teachers want to give this project idea a whirl?