Consistent with and supportive of the NMSC’s mission (“to support and strengthen park management, partnerships and programs that preserve and protect natural and cultural resource collections within Northeast Region sites of the National Park Service and make those collections accessible for research, education and public enjoyment”37), the center’s Facebook page promotes events, and engages in humorous but substantive discussions of artifacts in the collection. One Twitter feed, aimed at volunteers and interns, seeks to “build the workforce and reinforce the types of museum opportunities that are available,” while another addresses “all things storage-related for NPS collections: preventative conservation, equipment, security, fire protection.”38 Within six months of inaugurating these social media efforts, the center had made “significant progress toward our goals with NPS and non-NPS followers from across the nation. In many ways,” they report, “the numbers speak for themselves. We primarily provide service to 76 sites in the Northeast, but @NPS_NMSC (190+ followers), @NMSC_Volunteers (80+ followers), NMSC on Facebook (70+ followers), and our blog (300+ readers per posting) are reaching a much broader audience.”39 Last, African Burial Ground’s Twitter feed is a model of how to engage readers well beyond the specific aims of the park or the agency. Their posts share not only time-and-place-sensitive alerts as to what is happening at the site, but also news regarding scholarship and ideas pertinent to their park and of broader scholarly interest. As of this writing, about fifty thousand readers follow their tweets, expanding the site’s reach exponentially and modeling for other units the potential of this deceptively simple tool.
Building Learning Links: Place-Based Approaches to the American Revolution in the K-12 Classroom Little can be more useful in cultivating the interest of new generations of young Americans than drawing upon the Park Service’s extraordinary array of sites, documents, and artifacts to create K-12 learning materials. One outstanding example of this is the collaboration that produced, among other things, the website “The American Revolution: Lighting Freedom’s Flame,” as well as Honored Places: The National Park Service Teacher’s Guide to the American Revolution (available online and in published form).40 Beginning as an initiative to bring together the resources surrounding more than twenty Revolutionary War parks for the 225th anniversary of the American Revolution, the website gathers together resources for students, researchers, and teachers; the site posts a timeline and brief biographies of key players, as well as short essays on a range of topics. This collaborative effort of teachers, scholars, and Park Service educational specialists also offers a list of NPS sites associated with the American Revolution and describes NPS educational programs at various American Revolution sites. Honored Places extends the use of the material. Organized around five lessons: “Prelude to the Revolutionary War,” “Words and Action,” “Making Choices,” “The Power of Remembrance,” and “The Legacy,” each lesson includes learning objectives, 37 “About | NMSC Archeology Blog”, n.d. http://nmscarcheologylab.wordpress.com/about/. 38 The two Twitter feeds are @NMSC_Volunteers (132 followers as of December 4, 2011) and @NMSC_StorageGuy (formerly @NPS_NMSC), which as of December 4, 2011, had 433 followers. 39 Parker, “Since No One Knows Us.” 40 NPS, “The American Revolution: Lighting Freedom’s Flame,” “Revolutionary Teaching Resources,” “The Learning Center,” updated November 7, 2005, http://www.nps.gov/revwar/educational_resources /overview.html; and NPS, “The American Revolution: Lighting Freedom’s Flame,” “Revolutionary Teaching Resources,” Honored Places: The National Park Service Teacher’s Guide to the American Revolution, updated October 3, 2008, http://www.nps.gov/revwar/educational_resources/teachers.html. This material is based in part upon work conducted under two cooperative agreements, one between the U.S. Department of the Interior, NPS, and National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, and another between the NPS Southeast Regional Office and the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
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