Category: history
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A virtual chat with President Lincoln
Thanks to Nik Peachey’s post last week about Virsona, I had a short text chat with an AI version of Abraham Lincoln this afternoon. This was our brief conversation: Abraham Lincoln: Hi. You: hello Abraham Lincoln: who are you? You: I am a teacher Abraham Lincoln: Nice to meet you. You: Why did we fight…
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Highlights from Septemberfest 2008
Our family had a great time this afternoon at the annual Septemberfest event sponsored by the Oklahoma History Center. Here are a few of the highlights I caught with my camera. My favorite moments of the day were listening to cowboy re-enactor Whit Edwards tell about life for the cowboys working on the great plains…
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Capturing DVD Video for editing
I’m working on creating a curriculum DVD for the Gaylord-Pickens Museum of the Oklahoma Heritage Association, which will be shared with teachers and students before they come to the museum for face-to-face field trips this fall and spring. Thanks to grants from the Dell Foundation and the Inasmuch Foundation free field trips for hundreds of…
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Filmmakers document incredible courage of Liberian women
My knowledge of Liberia has been pretty limited to date. I learned about the Liberian Renaissance Education Complex talking to Dr. Dennis Harper (founder of Kijana Voices and Generation YES) at NECC in 2007 as part of a podcast interview. Before our conversation I had not heard of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia…
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Railroads and virtual connections
I love railroads. Had I lived in a bygone era, I feel certain I would have been drawn to work around or on railroads when they were the primary “connecting technology” which brought people together and made geographic places seem far closer. I’ve reflected several times in the past on the similarities between physical railroads…
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Podcast272: A Conversation about the Cell Phone Audio Tour at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum
This podcast is a recorded interview with Nancy Coggins, Marketing and Communications Director for the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, discussing the new cell phone audio tour which museum staff have made available for the past two months. The Memorial and Museum’s video podcast virtual tour has won national recognition in the past and…
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72 Years of Free Barbeque
In line with the spirit of the developing Storychasers project, I’ve created a six minute documentary about yesterday’s free community barbeque in Dalhart, Texas, offered as part of the festivities for the annual XIT Rodeo. As they have for the past 72 years, community volunteers prepared nine thousand pounds of barbeque meat with all the…
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Storychasing the 2008 XIT Rodeo and Ranch
Our family is in Dalhart, Texas, this weekend for the annual XIT Rodeo. My in-laws are from Dalhart and are attending their 50th high school reunion, in addition to the XIT Rodeo which triples the population of Dalhart each year during this single weekend. According to the “Thumbnail History of the XIT Ranch” from the…
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MemoryArchive and wikified history
I had a wonderful visit over the phone this evening with Derek Baird, who USED to be with Yahoo! for Teachers (before Yahoo cancelled the program – although strangely the website is still up) and I’ve known through our collaborative work for the professional development committee of the K-12 Online Conference. We were visiting about…
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Four projects and 1 place to know about
I learned recently about an educator who is making a professional development journey across the United States to work with teachers and schools on using collaborative web 2.0 tools with students, and I sent her an email with the following information. These are collaborative projects I want to make sure she knows about, as well…