For the 2020-2021 school year, I was selected as one of two Albert J. Bowley Scholars by the University of Mary Washington Department of Historic Preservation. Bowley Scholars intern 12 hours each week at the James Monroe Museum in Fredericksburg, VA. My focus during the internship was developing educational activities and producing social media posts. A selection of the projects I completed for the museum can be found below.
Hunt for History QR Code Quiz
The Hunt for History QR Code Quiz came about from a desire to bring touchless interactives to the James Monroe Museum’s exhibits. Due to COVID-19 concerns, the tablets and Kids’ Corner, which offered opportunities for families to engage with the content.
To develop the quiz, I began with specific objects in the exhibits. I wrote the questions to encourage engagement with the objects and discussion between visitors, especially family groups visiting with a wide range of ages. The Virginia Standards of Learning and different learning theories were used to develop the questions to meet these objectives.
An individual quiz was created for each question using the Fyrebox quiz generator, with a QR code generated to correspond to each question. The QR codes were posted in the exhibits as near to their corresponding objects as possible. I created a Hunt for History logo to help visitors locate the codes (sort of like a scavenger hunt, which inspired the name of the quiz). Visitors can use the camera app on their smartphone or other smart device to participate in the quiz, and the hope is to eventually be able to offer tablets for visitors to use to ensure that the quiz is accessible to those who may not have access to the necessary technology.
The video below offers a more in-depth look at the development of the questions, a walkthrough of how the quiz works, and an example of one of the codes in an exhibit.
I created this video for the James Monroe Museum to offer an introduction to the quiz. It was shared on their social media to help advertise the new interactive. I used iMovie to edit the video.
The Hunt for History Quiz was also featured in the local Fredericksburg newspaper, The Free-Lance Star, in the article “Kids can hunt codes at James Monroe Museum”:
Colonial Cooking
I developed Colonial Cooking as a way of producing educational content that could be used at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The cooking video features a recipe for “apple tarts” from Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook American Cookery. I began the project by doing a few trial runs of the recipe, where I ‘translated’ the recipe to make it easier to follow using modern methods and measurements. Once I had the recipe solidified, I developed a script for a cooking tutorial that would guide the viewer through making the recipe (with the intention being that the viewer would follow along as they also cooked the recipe). I then filmed the video, including close up shots of my hands to demonstrate techniques and transition shots using the apples needed for the apple tart.
After filming, I designed a title card for the video in Canva, which was then imported into iMovie as an image to use as the first title slide. I also edited the clips together in iMovie to bring the tutorial all together. Before posting it to the Museum’s social media, however, I used the script to ensure that the subtitles were accurate, improving the accessibility of the video. The video was posted to the Museum’s YouTube page and shared on their social media. The video can be viewed below:
I wrote, filmed, and edited all videos on this page over the course of the internship.
