BRATTLEBORO — The National Endowment for the Humanities–backed Brattleboro Words Project has distributed state-of-the-art digital recording sets for several area schools and the Brooks Memorial Library.
According to a news release, this is part of the project's first year of community research and audio-gathering for the Brattleboro Words Trail - self-guided digital and physical walking, biking, and driving audio tours of important sites in our area's storied past.
Equipment donations were made possible by Brattleboro Words Project Sponsor Guilford Sound, whose founder and chief engineer, Dave Snyder, designed the sets.
Snyder also worked with local builder Dave Ross to customize a sound-insulated “Story Booth” at Brooks Memorial Library for the use of community Research Leaders and members of the public, who can check out equipment or use it in the booth. A step-by-step equipment user guide is also available on the project website.
Nine area schools, including the Guilford School, Brattleboro Area Middle School, and the Chesterfield School in New Hampshire, representing 14 classrooms, have received or are in the process of receiving a digital audio recording set.
Sets are used to record the connections, the stories, and the writings students find as they research particular places in our community. Citizen Research Leaders can use the library equipment and Story Booth to create audio content around sites pegged to walking, biking, and driving maps. All participants are building 21st-century skills as they engage the history of places we share.
People will be able to download maps from the project website and listen to audio at points along the trail.
Project Technical Director Reg Martell is working with Brattleboro Area Middle School teacher Joe Rivers, whose social-studies students have made 175 podcasts chronicling Brattleboro-area history for the Brattleboro Historical Society website.
The project helps spread this successful approach to learning and community mapping skills to other schools, and also gathers and preserves imagery from primary sources to enliven the Brattleboro Words Trail website.
The equipment is also being used by two project-inspired, podcast-making classes at Marlboro College, where the research and mapping has a strong social corollary.