We have spent a lot of the summer working on the Grand Emporium of the West tablet app, designed for middle school history teachers, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and EDSITEment. We also had the rich opportunity to share that work recently with two separate focus groups of middle school history teachers, one predominately from the Vancouver School District, and one predominately from the Evergreen School District, the two largest districts in Southwest Washington. We still are sifting through the data, but, overall, the app performed very well technically, and it had many promising features that teachers were thrilled about using. In terms of development, the app clearly still needs a better overall focus, as a stations-based program, and some of the suggested activities and discussion prompts will need to be refined, I think, to better serve the teachers and students. While we are working on some of that (with a delivery date of year end), here are a few new screen shots:
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| Incorporates the new NEH and EDSITEment! logos. |
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| After an animation runs, showing this historic drawing, it converts into an interface. |
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| A basic station page, with video prompt, activity prompts, and discussion prompts. |
