Often times, local history is lost because stories are forgotten or changed as they are passed down to the next generation. The purpose of this project is to encourage student to find out about their roots, specifically the history of the town that they are growing up in.
This project is aimed at students in elementary and junior high school. It can be done as an independent or group activity involving the whole class.
In this project students will study their local history. By recording and sharing this information, students will help to preserve their local history. Students can compare and contrast their community with others. This activity will provide students with a general knowledge and understanding of their local history, as well as help them to appreciate the similarities and differences of others.
Students will uncover the history of their hometown.
They will collect information by completing at least three of the following tasks:
- Find out when, why, and by who their town was founded
- Interview townspeople for stories about the founding families
- List businesses that have been operated in the town and when they were established
- Describe festivals held by the town and the reason behind them
- Visit Municipal Building to collect data
- Collect pictures of buildings and people
- Find one or two facts that make their town unique
They will create a web page(s) using the information collected. Then, they upload their page to their local server. They will send the link via email to cjburrus@illinoisalumni.org. This page will then be linked to the Hometown History web site.
If the student(s) does not have a local server available for their page, they may attach their html page and all the corresponding files to an email to cjburrus@illinoisalumni.org.
Students will:
To register, send an email to cjburrus@illinoisalumni.org with the following information:
Or, visit the Registration page and complete the form.
This week, I developed an outline for my project. I brainstormed ideas and then registered the project with Global School House Projects. Then, I began developing the basic web site.
During this week, I designed the layout for the web site. I experimented with form pages as a way for participants to register and/or submit their pages. I spoke with some young people about their willingness to participate in the program. I will email them the link to the web site for them to look at and think about. I made the project available to my fellow CTER students via our web board and an email message.
For week three, I continued improving the web site and began my own search for information about my hometown. I found a website -- http://www.response-o-matic.com/ -- that allows you to create response forms for web pages. I used this site to create a registration and a submit form for my web site. This will hopefully make communication smoother. I registered the program with another project registry: Houghton-Mifflin Company. I have not received any offers for participation in the project. I am hoping that when school starts, I will get more of a response.
During the fourth week, I created a separate page for each state. These pages will hold links to the history pages participants create. I also created a basic web page for my own hometown. I will continue to improve on this site and my hometown page in the future. I have had a few responses from teachers interested in participating during the school year. I will extend my project dates through the school year.
www.response-o-matic.com is unavailable at this time, so I rewrote my registration and submission forms asking participants to send information via email.
If you run across any errors or broken links, please email me at cjburrus@illinoisalumni.org.
I have not had more than a couple of responses to my web project. The few that I have are from personal contacts and fellow CTER students. This may pick up once the school year begins. It would be beneficial for me to find new ways of advertising my project. Maybe I will expand it to other countries.
The effectiveness of this project will be measured by the number of participants and their satisfaction with the project.
Introduction ¦ History Home ¦ Register ¦ Hometown USA ¦ Submit ¦ Links
Created by Casey Jo Burrus
Created: July 2003
Updated: May 4, 2005