STEM Students Digitizing Woodbine
Three Valley City High School STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) students—Kasy Crow, McKenzie Davies, and Seth Gibsom—have taken on the task of digitizing Woodbine Cemetery. They have been working on this project on and off since September, having spent many fall days clearing the sod and grass on top of the ground level headstones. Then, the students took pictures of each family stone and headstone.
Once back in the classroom, the students created a PDF for each person buried at Woodbine. The document includes the last name, first name, date of birth, date of death, a picture of the family stone and individual headstone, and a Google Earth image of the cemetery, with a marker showing the individual grave site.
Wes Anderson had this project as the Barnes County Museum curator. He has all of the analog products for Woodbine, but not the digital. Our students did a lot of planning and troubleshooting during this process.
The students are in the process of creating a Woodbine Cemetery website. On the ‘Find Your Loved One’ tab, every person will be listed. You will be able to click on their name and their pdf will pop up. The students are cross referencing all of their pdfs with the analog list that Wes Anderson provided them. The plan is to have this website complete and operational by the end of the school year.
This is the third science credit to graduate for those students that are on the career ready/military ready path. Students learn by andragogy (the adult method of learning) with projects that they choose, they are passionate about, which leads to ‘just in time learning,’ authentic learning, and develops a sense of pride in their work.
This has been a great
project for our STEM students. They needed to plan, organize, think ahead, work together, design, communicate, troubleshoot, and problem solve throughout this project.
Here are some other STEM projects that students are working on before the end of the year: remodeling an ice house, developing and coding a video game, 3D modeling and printing, designing and building robots, refurbishing and fixing art frames, interior designing of an apartment, Medicine Wheel projects under Dr. Stickler’s mentorship, graphic design with stickers and banners.
VCHS Students are able to join STEM, as a high school class that any Junior or Senior can take. Many students take it as their third science, but we have several student taking it this year as they know they get to pursue their passion, learn 21st century skills, and earn another credit.