WyoHistory.org debuts new education package
(Press release) — Online encyclopedia WyoHistory.org presents a new education package especially for students, teachers and others who enjoy learning more about the state’s history. The package includes lively articles on nine historic sites on the Oregon Trail in Wyoming enhanced with interactive maps, extensive photo galleries, videos of inquisitive fourth graders touring the sites, field-trip lesson plans for teachers and quizzes for students.
Visitors to WyoHistory.org can access the new package linked prominently near the top of the home page, www.wyohistory.org.
WyoHistory.org Editor Tom Rea and Designer Steve Foster created the easy-to-navigate instructional package by working with Natrona County and Casper College educators, students and museum professionals, and using up-to-date mapping information drawn from public sources with the help of the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office.
Rea notes that all Wyoming fourth graders study the Oregon Trail. He said he hopes the resource will make the trails even more attractive to them, their teachers, their families—and anyone else interested in Wyoming’s past.
“The great thing about the Oregon Trail in Wyoming,” Rea says, “is that so much of it still looks like it did in the 1850s,” when traffic on the trail was at its peak. “The space, distance and landscapes on the trails help bring history alive for students of all ages,” he adds.
He says he hopes the maps, directions, photos, videos and lesson plans will help more teachers find time to take kids on field trips on the trails — always a challenge as schools ask teachers to do more and more with each available day.
All of the lesson plans offer notes for elementary, middle and high-school teachers on how the plans address specific requirements in the Wyoming State Social Studies Standards at each of those levels.
High school students from Star Lane Center in Casper created the videos by filming and interviewing elementary students when they toured sites like Fort Laramie, the Guernsey Ruts, Fort Caspar, Independence Rock, Martin’s Cove, South Pass and Fort Bridger.
The WyoHistory.org website, a project of the Wyoming State Historical Society, has been on line since 2011 and officially launched in March 2013. The Wyoming State Historical Society is a nonprofit membership organization approaching its 61st birthday. For more information, contact Rea at (307) 277-3275 or email editor@wyohistory.org.
