Allensworth State Historic Park 100 year anniversary.

Better and Better! I've been working on a grant for producing podcasts and lesson plans for Allensworth and a few other state parks. I've had the opportunity to look at a lot of the primary sources related to Allensworth and I have to say that this story, an independent African American community in the central valley shortly after the turn of the century, really must be told to a wider audience. If you are anywhere near CA and the central valley, you need to check out this state park. I'm not certain when the podcasts will be available on the state site, but I will post URLs as soon as possible. http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=583

I believe that the addition of educational materials to the state park sites is of huge importance given the current economic climate. After all, it is becoming more expensive to provide field trips at schools due the increase in fuel prices and insurance costs. In order to give students access to places of historic significance such as Allensworth, there is increasing need for virtual field trips. Part of this could be accomplished using WebQuests (http://webquest.org/index.php) developed for the individual parks. This would allow students to find pertinent information on the parks even if a field trip were not possible. Another potential means of providing the experience without the expense would be to have an individual at the location sream a video tour in real time to a classroom. This is one of the things that PORTS does http://www.ports.parks.ca.gov/ .