Fort Vancouver Mobile

Mobile phones have become ubiquitous yet remain untapped as a storytelling medium. They offer the power of media, text, audio, video, animation, in a fully personalized format. Through GPS technology these devices even can locate a user and share, on the precise spot, data tailored just for that user's particular interest. Users then can add written responses, video or sound about a site or event. The implications for such authoring precision, audience awareness and interactivity pose exciting challenges to the team creating the Fort Vancouver Mobile project, a storytelling environment accessible via smart phones that tells the history of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Phase I, just completed, comprises apps for the iPhone and Android and a story module focusing on Hawaiians who lived and worked at the site in the mid 1800s. Phase II, the focus on this proposal, seeks $50,000 to create modules focusing on gender issues at the site that have, heretofore, gone unexamined

Grand Emporium of the West Tablet App

The Grand Emporium of the West project created and investigated new forms of m-Learning, based on matters of historical significance, delivered through mobile technologies, and focused on the emerging affordances of the medium. Development of this project began in March 2012 -- with planning, initial user tests, and early prototypes –triggered by this NEH “We the People Grant” investment. The grant supported the research team’s work in this area, but it also led to the development of new material, tools, and approaches for secondary schools to teach and learn about history, through apps (available for both Apple and Android tablet computers). The grant not only generated a significant burst of new multimedia material – integrated into the tablet apps but also repurposed into related smartphone apps, with the media, when appropriate, geolocated at the primary research site, the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Vancouver, WA, but it also served as a major catalyst for additional funding, larger collaborations with the National Park Service, educational advancements, more app development, and nationally and internationally distributed scholarship. Through this NEH grant, and the earlier Digital Start-Up Grant (HD 51330-11), WSUV and Fort Vancouver have become an epicenter of internationally significant research and innovation related to mobile media and mobile learning, generating free and accessible mobile apps, for the general public, while also advancing the digital humanities field in several demonstrable ways, which will be outlined in this report