WMS students help archive websites
Websites often come and go. Their
information changes daily. Still some websites can have historical
significance and be important to future generations.
That’s the idea behind the K12 Web
Archiving Program, a partnership between the Internet Archive and
the Library of Congress. In its third year, the program works with
students in schools across the country to preserve websites.
Seventh graders at Whitefish Middle
School were one of 14 schools to participate in the program during
the school year.
Librarian Dana Carmichael applied to
participate in the program. She partnered with teachers Megan Pepe
and Sara Parr on the project.
Seventh grade history students nominate
websites for archiving and then a volunteer group of nine students
evaluated those websites and chose which would be included.
Whitefish students chose to record
information on Montana Native American tribes, Montana recreation
activities and the topic of “Are trains still important?”.
Carmichael said the project helped
students learn to be self-sufficient.
“One of the big concerns from the
librarian perspective is that students are on the Internet multiple
times a day and they have to decide what webpages are accurate and
current,” she said.
The volunteer evaluators spent several
lunch periods looking through the websites nominated by other
students. They had to determine if the website was worthy of being
archived. The program uses a web archiving service that’s captures
digital content from the web to create a type of time capsule.
“It was fun to see what you could learn
on the websites,” student Sam Benkleman said.
He was particularly interested in the
Browning High School website which gives a description of Native
American life.
Student Cooper Donahue said reading all
the websites he learned a large amount of information.
He enjoyed learning about the sites
that deal with recreation in Montana. Students selected sites
dealing with skiing, dinosaurs and camping.
“The other topics were all pretty
serious, but that was fun,” he said.
Students seemed to learn about the
topics without even realizing they were learning.
“If you can make it fun and sneak in
learning that’s always good,” Carmichael said.
To look at the Whitefish students’ work
visit http://archive-it.org/k12/10WhitefishMS.html.