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Fort Vancouver Mobile - A video overview

Courtesy of: Research Assistant Aaron May of Washington State University Vancouver's Creative Media and Digital Culture program. Produced in 2011.

Video highlights from the apps (36-minute version)

This montage provides a sampling of some of the video media in the Fort Vancouver Mobile apps. This app is much more than just a video distribution system, but these videos show the variety of content, from expositional segments to new journalism to those intended to prompt the development of interactive narratives.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

"Fort App-reciated" -- Columbian coverage of the Hartzog / Powell awards

A recap of the two recent FVM awards, the Hartzog Award, and the John Wesley Powell Prize, per The Columbian:




America's national parks have a lot of human stories to share. A Vancouver researcher is breaking new ground in telling them, which is why Brett Oppegaard is the National Park Service's 2012 volunteer of the year.

Learn more

Check out the blog about the project.
Oppegaard and Greg Shine, historian and chief ranger at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, also received the John Wesley Powell Prize for historical displays on behalf of the team that worked on the "Kanaka Village" project.

Did you know ?

• The Hartzog Award honors George Hartzog Jr., National Park Service director from 1964 to 1972, and his family. Annual awards are given in six categories: individual volunteer; youth volunteer; enduring service; volunteer group; youth volunteer group; and park volunteer program.
• The John Wesley Powell Prize, presented by the Society for History in the Federal Government, alternates annually in recognizing excellence in historic preservation and historical displays. It honors the ethnographer and explorer who completed the first known passage through the Grand Canyon in 1869.
Oppegaard, an assistant professor at Washington State University Vancouver, was selected from among 257,000 Park Service volunteers as the individual winner of the George and Helen Hartzog Award. He coordinates the mobile storytelling apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices that are the first of their kind in the Park Service.
The John Wesley Powell Prize recognizes the project's "Kanaka Village" module, which details a diverse community that worked at the Northwest headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's trading empire.
Back when the site west of the reconstructed stockade was being cleared of blackberries, its storytelling potential was obvious; so were the obstacles, Oppegaard said.
"It's two locked buildings in an open field," Oppegaard said during a recent visit to the fort site. "How can you tell the incredible history of the village without a ranger standing by all the time?"
With mobile apps, you can tell it with video portrayals done by historical re-enactors. There also are audio elements and interactive features. Images include maps, and paintings and drawings done by visitors 170 years ago. There are links to archived documents such as old newspapers and diaries.
The application was designed by WSUV's creative media and digital culture program, in partnership with the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. The Kanaka workforce was represented by the Ke Kukui Foundation, a local Polynesian-Hawaiian cultural group, and Portland State University also provided support.

A national model

"We've used this as a national model," said Shine, who is a member of the Park Service's digital media training team.
It's a pioneering approach to sharing history, said Bob Sutton, the National Park Service's chief historian.
The Powell Prize committee made the selection based on the use of modern technology to engage the public at a historic site.
"I'm very, very deeply honored that our work has been so well received -- especially by this group of professional historians," Shine said after the announcement.
A few parks have hired media developers to produce fairly simple digital content, but those are essentially enhanced guidebooks.
The "Kanaka Project" is about storytelling. And with 398 units in the National Park Service, there are a lot of stories to tell.
While spectacular landscapes such as Yellowstone, Crater Lake and the Grand Canyon are often seen as the park system's crown jewels, "A lot of National Park Service sites are about people," Shine said.
And even sites where you're overwhelmed by natural grandeur can come with compelling human stories, Shine noted.
"Yosemite and Yellowstone had long connections with Native Americans, and with immigrants' journeys to the West," Shine said.
When Oppegaard received his award in a ceremony in Washington, D.C., park officials from across the country asked him how to develop the applications, he said.

5,000 hours into it

However, the former Columbian reporter won't be producing apps from Death Valley to Valley Forge. They're neither cheap nor easy. So far, Oppegaard has mined almost $70,000 in grants to fund the Fort Vancouver app. In the past four years, he's put about 5,000 hours into it, although much of the research was part of his doctoral dissertation.
And that doesn't include all the other volunteers, who combined to donate about 3,500 hours in 2012 alone … plus about 2,208 volunteer hours contributed last year by the students in the WSUV digital storytelling class co-taught by Shine and associate professor Dene Grigar.
Oppegaard also called in a lot of favors from friends and colleagues -- something he wouldn't do again, Oppegaard said.
But Oppegaard does hope to create an open-source program. It will be a toolkit, he said, that people across the country could use with images and videos representing their local histories.
"It mostly would have to be funded fully by grants, or other resources, to make it work at other sites.
"That said, we have built a framework here that makes applications at other sites much more efficient and less expensive than the original app was," Oppegaard said. "We have developed techniques and expertise in this project that no one else in the world has.
"Once the app has been built, very little is needed in maintenance," he said. "They very well could be at the site forever, or as long as they have some value to visitors."


Friday, March 15, 2013

WSU News coverage of the Powell Prize


The WSU News article on the Powell prize:


VANCOUVER, Wash. - The Fort Vancouver Mobile Project is one of two projects nationwide to receive this year's John Wesley Powell Prize for outstanding achievement in historical displays, awarded by the Society for History in the Federal Government.
 
Brett Oppegaard, fort volunteer and assistant professor at Washington State University Vancouver, and Greg Shine, chief ranger and historian for Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, received the award on behalf of the project team specifically for the "Kanaka" module of the application, which details the history of Hawaiian workers at the fur trading headquarters.
 
The award committee made the selection based on "the exemplary manner in which the mobile application seized the opportunity to utilize modern technology to engage the public at a historic site. With this project, the dual challenges of engaging a progressively digital-savvy and device-dependent on-site audience and attracting an equally technologically-connected virtual audience have been met in an innovative way that can serve as a model for other federal agencies to follow as they strive to connect people to place."
 
"To receive this award from such an eminent group of professional historians is a great honor and speaks volumes to the quality of historical research, analysis, writing and application that Greg and Brett have led with the Fort Vancouver Mobile Project," said Tracy Fortmann, fort superintendent. "Not only is this project breaking new ground in the field of digital media, this award shows that it is also an innovative, national model in the field of history."
 
The Fort Vancouver project is a collaboration between about 20 scholars, historians, new media practitioners and curators, with institutional support from WSU Vancouver and the National Park Service, as well as Texas Tech University and Portland State University.
 
The Powell prize commemorates the explorer and federal administrator whose work demonstrated early recognition of the importance of historic preservation and historical display.
 
"The Powell prize is one of the most important and prestigious awards given to federal government historians each year,” said Robert Sutton, chief historian of the National Park Service. "This is a huge honor.”
 
The other winner of this year’s prize is the "What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” exhibit at the National Archives.
 
The society for history was founded in 1979 in Washington, D.C., to advance the unique interests of federal historians and provide a body through which they could address common concerns, support shared interests and stimulate discussion.
 
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

2012 tally of hours spent on the FVM project

Just received the annual report from Fort Vancouver's Chief Ranger Greg Shine, and his records show that the dozens of volunteers working on this FVM project in fiscal year 2012 amassed 7,687 hours over the 12 months. Wow! ... That includes 2,208 hours alone from the WSU Vancouver Digital Storytelling class that Shine co-taught with Dr. Dene Grigar. That is a very impressive total and demonstrates, again, how generous and extremely dedicated the FVM team has been on this project. Thank you so very much for an amazing 2012, FVMers!

John Wesley Powell Prize winner!



More great news for the Fort Vancouver Mobile project; we have been selected as a John Wesley Powell Prize winner for 2013.

Here is the press release from the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site:

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site

For Immediate Release

=====================================
March 13, 2013
=====================================

Contact:
Tracy Fortmann, Superintendent

(360) 816-6205 or Tracy_Fortmann@nps.gov

Info: http://go.usa.gov/2XdP

Park Staff and Partners Receive National Award for Fort Vancouver Mobile Application

The Fort Vancouver Mobile Project has been chosen as one of two projects nationwide to receive this year's John Wesley Powell Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of historical displays, awarded by the Society for History in the Federal Government (SHFG).

Greg Shine, Chief Ranger and Historian for Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, and Dr. Brett Oppegaard, Volunteer-in-Parks and Assistant Professor at Washington State University Vancouver, received the award on behalf of the project team specifically for the "Kanaka" module of the application, which details the history of Hawaiian workers at this fur trading headquarters.

The Fort Vancouver Mobile Project is a collaboration between a core group of about 20 scholars, historians, new media practitioners, and curators, with institutional support from Washington State University - Vancouver and the National Park Service, as well as Texas Tech University and Portland State University.

Dr. Robert Sutton, the Chief Historian of the National Park Service, stated, "The Powell Prize is one of the most important and prestigious awards given to federal government historians each year. This is a huge honor for NPS volunteer Brett Oppegaard and Historian Greg Shine, for Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and Tracy Fortmann, the Park Superintendent, and for all historians in the National Park Service. We are extremely proud of Greg Shine, Brett Oppegaard, and the entire project team."

The award committee made the selection based on "the exemplary manner in which the mobile application seized the opportunity to utilize modern technology to engage the public at a historic site. With this project, the dual challenges of engaging a progressively digital-savvy and device-dependent on-site audience and attracting an equally technologically-connected virtual audience have been met in an innovative way that can serve as a model for other federal agencies to follow as they strive to connect people to place."

"To receive this award from such an eminent group of professional historians is a great honor and speaks volumes to the quality of historical research, analysis, writing and application that Greg and Brett have led with the Fort Vancouver Mobile Project," said Tracy Fortmann, Superintendent. "Not only is this project breaking new ground in the field of digital media, this award shows that it is also an innovative, national model in the field of history."

Background:

The Powell Prize commemorates the explorer and federal administrator whose work demonstrated early recognition of the importance of historic preservation and historical display.

The John Wesley Powell Prize alternates annually in recognizing excellence in the fields of historic preservation and historical displays. The award for historic displays is given for any form of interpretive historical presentation including, but not limited to, museum exhibits, historical films, CDs/DVDs, websites, or multimedia displays.

The Society for History in the Federal Government brings together government professionals, academics, consultants, students, and citizens interested in understanding federal history work and the historical development of the federal government.

The Society was founded in 1979 in Washington, D.C., to advance the unique interests of federal historians and provide a body through which they could address common concerns, support shared interests, and stimulate discussion. Members were made up of a wide range of professionals who worked to produce both narrative historical work and public history projects.

-NPS-

Monday, March 11, 2013

Android development updates

Joe Oppegaard and the FVM apps development team have been working hard lately to broaden the accessibility of the FVM apps on the wide array of Android devices (phones and tablets) available in the market today. While the overall number of devices (and configurations) available is slippery, because of the speed at which those numbers change (more than 1 million Android devices are activated every day, around the world), it is significant to note that the FVM apps now are accessible and functional (although not necessarily perfectly designed) for 2,424 Android formats at this point, according to an accessibility report Joe recently ran. We will use that as a baseline for future Android development, hoping to bring in as many devices as possible.

More interesting Android developer information can be found here (about platform versions) and here (a broad overview of Android).

A Villager's Tale - Animations

New work arriving regularly. Here are the animations that WSU Vancouver student Vern Blystone created, mentored by Dr. Dene Grigar, for the upcoming module titled "A Villager's Tale." These animations are combined with a still-image slide of an archaeological artifact, to create the effect that the artifact is being placed back into its original context, through the interaction by the user. Very cool idea by this student and the AVT team.

The thimble



The S-hook



The razor



The ink bottle



The dominoes

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