4/20/09 Happy Patriots' Day

Though April 19 is the real Patriots' Day commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War, it is now celebrated on the third Monday of April. It is a Massachusetts holiday but since Maine was originally part of Massachusetts, we get to celebrate, too. The University of Maine Farmington is closed today to commemorate the event. Of course, it fell during our spring break, so it's a holiday for staff who are on 12-month contracts but was already a holiday for students and faculty.

Wikipedia has a nice article with more than you ever wanted to know about Patriots' Day including its timing with the Boston Marathon and Red Sox games.

I was going to go into the office today (I have a key to my building, so even though the University is closed, I can get in) and get work done but I slept in this morning and am still in my pajamas at 12:30 in the afternoon. I have been busily working on our Maine Community Heritage Project over the weekend and am tempted to stay home and work on that some more. But I have a giant list of things to do at the office, too. Oh the dilemma!

10/18/08 GPS for MCHP

An important part of our Maine Community Heritage Project is gathering GPS coordinates of all of our locations so that we can pinpoint locations of the places we're talking about on a map. Then using GIS sofware (Geographic Information Systems), we can create these cool, layered maps. We can also create "layers" for Google Earth and we hope to create walking tours where folks can see the places in the photos we're scanning but also see where the places are. I'm not describing it very well, but trust me . . . it's gonna be cool!

Today, MRM and Nancy and I got in MRM's car and started driving all around Farmington and Farmington Falls. Nancy knew where we were going and navigated. For our first stop, she said, "Turn right. Now slow down. Turn in here." And we parked next to a logging truck on an empty lot:

Turns out, that was the site of Farmington Falls School. Wow. You gotta really know your local history to know that. There were zero signs, no indicators, she just knew. Good thing we're capturing this information now! Here are the other places we went to today:

On north side of river (I forgot to ask the name of the river . . . good thing we're on a team), site of Farmington Falls Mill (can't tell you which one . . . one of the things we're learning is that the same site would change hands many times and even what was milled in the building would change):

Sorry these aren't very flattering photos or even very interesting ones. I had my iPhone in one hand taking pictures while trying to upload them to Loopt online service where you can share with friends your current location (yes GPS wise or in my case by using triangulation from cell phone towers) and what you're doing. In the other hand I had a second GPS and was confirming the numbers that MRM was getting and Nancy was writing it all down.

On south side of river . . . another mill in Farmington Falls:

Oops, I didn't get the name of this cemetery:

Two photos of Measuring Rock . . . one of the surveyor's spike (hey! I saw one of those earlier this year on the Appalachian Trail hike!) and the other of MRM getting the EXACT GPS coordinates by climbing on top of the rock. :-) When the first settlers came, they didn't have surveyor's tools so they improvised. They picked this really big rock as their starting point. It stands out, is easily located, and is somewhatly central. Then, because they didn't have traditional surveyor's chains that are one rod long, they took pieces of bark and made rods. And then they set out to mark off the land into plots. Today's surveyors are impressed at how accurate their measurements were and nobody's every changed their property lines.

And a very friendly dog at the private home on whose property Measuring Rock is located. Fortunately, Nancy knew the family so when they came out to see who was climbing on their rock, they were delighted to see Nancy and they welcomed us. Shwew!

Heading back to the car after measuring the Measuring Rock:

Next was Gower Cemetery. It was a short but steep climb from the road to the cemetery. The other cemeteries are right next to the road. This one is NOT visible from the road and you really have to know where you're going to find it. This is such an adventure!!

This is a little cemetery and only has 2 headstones in it.

This person fought in the American Revolution as denoted by the Sons of the American Revolution marker next to the grave.

This is the site of Stephen Titcomb's House. It burned down in the 1950's and the site was razed and the basement filled in so there is NO sign of it ever being here. Nancy wasn't sure exactly where in this field it was located so we got to pick. ;-) She did know it was below the knoll and above the pine trees and visible from the road, so were pretty close.

Case cemetery:

We're now back in Farmington, north of Farmington Falls (we actually might have been back in Farmington 2 stops ago, I don't really know, but I know for sure in this photo we're back in town). It's the site of a school. Nancy knows which one. I was focused on my technology and didn't get it written down. I remembered it had the same last name as the man whose house is up the road a little bit but I don't remember the name. There are many advantages to having a great forgetter but when you're dealing with history, it's not an advantage. Fortunately, my role is about the technology and getting future teachers involved which I can do and do well even with a good forgetter. Melanie found an apple, which we thought was pretty ironic since we were at the site of a school. But then again, it was kind of creepy because there were no apple trees in sight, so where did that apple come from??

Now that is a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :-)

10/17/08 making sure it all works for the grant

Today MRM, who's also the head of the Farmington Cultural Heritage Project grant team that I'm a part of, and I met to get all of our equipment up and running. I purchased the laptop two weekends ago in Portland at The Apple Store and we ordered our high-end photo scanner from a reliable online source and it arrived Wednesday. It's a good thing we decided to do this trial run. It took a little longer than I expected. But we got it all running and the two pieces of equipment talking to each other so we're good to go! Exciting times ahead!

7/19/08 Maine Community History Project

Back in May, MRM contacted me about being involved in a grant proposal. The Maine Historical Society had a new program called the Maine Community History Project (MCHP) and she wanted to get together a team from Farmington to apply. She pulled together interested folks from the required participants (library, historical society, and a local school), plus she got a cool group called Center for Community GIS (CCGIS) and me--a faculty member who works with future teachers in the area of technology integration. The five representatives from each group met a few times and did some work via email and pulled together an application in a very short period of time. In June, we found out that 50 communities had applied and 8 had been awarded . . . and we were one of the 8. Yeehah!!

On June 27, three of us (MRM, Wendy--an English teacher at the local middle school, and me) went to the all-day training session in Portland at the Maine Historical Society (MHS). On July 7, we had our first official meeting as a participating community where the two staff members from the MHS led the meeting. Our team can have as many meetings as we want, but once a month we have a meeting with the MHS folks and they give us direction and guidance and we keep them updated on our progress. It's a very interesting way to accomplish a project like this.

Today was our first meeting on our own since the proposal-writing meetings. We met at the Historical Society building and just got a glimpse of the amazing stuff that they have and tried to get a handle on what we want to do and how we're going to do it. It's really overwhelming as well as exciting. Our goal is that with this grant (and the help from MHS and the funding that we're getting) we will be able to accomplish what MHS wants but also lay an organizational foundation for the Historical Society and future projects like this, even when we don't have funding.

Oh, so what is this project, you're asking? MHS has an amazing online artifacts collection called The Maine Memory Network. To quote their website, "The Maine Memory Network is a statewide digital museum that provides unprecedented access to over 13,000 historical items from over 180 museums, historical societies, libraries, and other organizations from every corner of Maine. Step inside to see rare photographs, documents and artifacts; to explore online exhibits; to access resources for teaching Maine history; and to learn about how you can participate and help preserve Maine history." Our goal is to digitize at least 150 artifacts from our community (and trust me, we have plenty . . . the Farmington Historical Society has well over 5,000 artifacts that they've catalogued and a bazillion more that they haven't been able to catalog yet) and create an online presence to share Farmington's rich heritage with the outside world. AND we're getting students in the area involved in the process. Since every 7th and 8th grader has a laptop in Maine through their amazing Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), they actually bring a rich resource to the project. And of course, on top of that, you're looking at hopefully getting the next generation involved in capturing and getting interested in their own heritage and history.

For me, it's going to be a heck of a lot of fun personally, but it's also going to enrich what I teach and how I teach it at the university. I'm very excited.