I was looking at this Flickr photo by a Twitter colleague of mine named Michael Peterson. He’s often posting photos of locations that played a significant role in Nebraska’s history. Official historical markers, ghost towns, the remnants of churches, hospitals, barns and places all around us that are about to disappear all together.
It got me thinking about 4th grade Nebraska History units, and people around the state who are proud of their heritage, and people who are passionate about photography, and the ever growing number of geo-taggers and the amazing web based tools that we have at our disposal in 2010. How can we focus all of these things into a single, incredibly informative and highly entertaining package?
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website that had elements of the following all combined in one spot:
- A database that correlated Nebraska photos with geo-data
- A beautiful (minimalistic) web interface that allowed you to view the photos by map view, or list view by county or region
- A web interface that allows people to contribute (moderated) 1st person narratives or content
- A mobile interface that allowed you to easily view the contents and/or contribute new data while in the field (+ iPhone/Android apps)
A person would not have to start completely from scratch, many ingredients/resources/models are already out there.
- National Register of Historic Places: Nebraska
- Nebraska Historical Marker Texts
- Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collections
- Nebraska State Historical Society Research Links
- Nebraska 4-H Geocaching
- Connect Nebraska
- Gilded Age Plains City
- Roundus
- API
Great idea. I love this….and thanks for mentioning me btw.
I would be happy to lend the Connect Nebraska website, but I also wonder if this is something that we should pitch to the Historical Society? I don’t know their Board/members so I don’t know how it would go over.
The Historical Society angle occurred to me also, but they seem to be focused on the curated collections side of things. I’m imagining a Flickr/Google Maps Mashup of creative commons licensed content. User contributed.
I thought the Nebraska Memories collection was a good lead also, until I saw the work involved in getting something added. they won’t work with individuals, only county historical societies.
This is an awesome idea! I could see this in the 7th/8th grade level too. My own kids love picture projects so I know it would be a “hit” with classrooms.
It would be a great Photo Safari for our Photography Club and/or my Digital Design Classes at OHS.
Mike – would it be an appropriate project for your Digital Design classes? The idea of pitching it to our (LPS) Information Tech Focus Program had crossed my mind also.
It definitely would be a great project for my Digital Design Classes-they would love it.
I love it this idea! It has so much meaning. We all live here in Nebraska, we take pictures, we have stories. It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. Way to go Chris!
I like the idea. It seems that if we are going to tie together location data, photos, posts, etc. that we would really need to build off of core of data sources. We would need some local databases that housed the Nebraska site data that we wanted to maintain and then decide on which external sites like Flickr and Picasa that we might want to tie into. Most sites these days seem to publish GeoRSS feeds, so if our local database could expose a GeoRSS feed then our main site would simply need to aggregate those sources with some options for visitors to focus in on a point of interest and learn about it.
Love it. Love it. Love it.
Count me IN.
I think another layer you should think about adding would be some way in which you could cross-reference Nebraska history with things that were happening elsewhere simultaneously. My family is not from here and during the 4th grade history projects I cringe to think Nebraska kids might think everyone everywhere was living in a sod house in the 1860s. I also think an important layer would be the impact white Nebraska history had on Native American history. Our “heritage” was pretty much their downfall. The Homestead site in Beatrice presents a very good film which presents this point of view very eloquently. Cool ideas.
Carol – An appropriate comment for Columbus Day, I’d say! I would posit that your fear is probably closer to a reality. Speaking for myself, when I grew up learning about the pioneers on the plains, I did not have a worldly view. I could barely get my head around living in a sod house, let alone what people in other places were doing as they chose this life of hardship. I agree with you, we don’t do a good enough job of presenting alternative ideas. Unfortunately, this may be a symptom of teaching Social Studies for 30 minutes a day, 2 days a week.
I love the idea of an “elsewhere” layer, but at this point we are having trouble getting the basics assembled.
Thanks for contributing your thoughts!