NEH Grant No. 2!

The official paperwork just about has cleared every hurdle, so we finally can announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities has enjoyed and appreciated our Fort Vancouver Mobile work so much, it has presented us with a second grant, a "We the People" Special Projects grant, in the amount of $19,400, to expand the FVM work onto tablet computers. That pushes our external funding for this project over the $100,000 mark. Congratulations, all!

This tablet app, titled the Grand Emporium of the West, will be focused on informal STEM learning within formal educational environments, targeted toward middle school students in history classes across the country. This NEH partnership, with Verizon and the NEH educational arm called EDSITEment, will include research into interactive tablet computer activities that further engagement and comprehension of 19th century culture and society on the western frontier, through a focus on the life and times of people living at Fort Vancouver. This extension of museum science will include digital media objects that model period exploration, discoveries, and survival techniques, through such participatory topics as cooking, traveling, and artistic documentation, which then require the students to engage in the activities through various means. I'll post more updates here as we develop the free app, which we expect to launch around February of next year. If you want to become a beta tester of this app, please let me know through fortvancouvermobilebeta@gmail.com.