[IRCA] OT: What I do when I'm not at the Dials...

["Ira Elbert New, III" <ien3@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Online encyclopedia offers some of the 'best' information on Georgia

Story Photos
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Bert New, an eighth-grade Georgia Studies teacher at Winder-Barrow Middle 
School, teaches about the federal government in class. New uses The New 
Georgia Encyclopedia online, which is about 2 years old, to give his 
students the opportunity "to take a virtual tour of the state."
Monira Al-Haroun Silk/Staff

Click thumbnails to enlarge
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By Wayne Ford   |    wayne.ford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   |    Story updated at 
5:11 PM on Sunday, January 22, 2006

Bert New employs more than a textbook to teach history to his students in 
his eighth-grade Georgia Studies class at Winder-Barrow Middle School.

He often guides them to The New Georgia Encyclopedia, a Web site launched 
two years ago at the University of Georgia that is quickly becoming a prime 
source for information on the state, from its history to its arts and 
cities.

"Throughout the Web site, there are pictures, clips of music, sound bytes 
you can use," New said. "The pictures are wonderful, and it's a good way to 
expose anyone to see what Georgia is like.

"I've had a number of kids use it for research projects," he said. "It's a 
very reliable source. The information is up-to-date and it covers almost 
every aspect of Georgia history that you'd want."

Kelly Caudle, the managing editor for the encyclopedia, said the Web site 
receives a number of "hits" from students such as New's.

"We saw a rhythm with the school year (in 2004)," Caudle said. "It picked up 
at the beginning of the school year and dropped off at the end."

But, Caudle added, the site garners attention from people outside of the 
schools.

"When you look at '05, we saw an increase in traffic in October and it held 
for November and December, which is interesting to us because it means we 
have turned a corner and we're not just rising and falling with the school 
year. People are really starting to turn to us for information. Teachers are 
saying this is a good source. It's a good site to go to for school work, but 
I think also a lot of people find more than they suspected."

"In the past 12 months, we've had more than 4 million page requests. That's 
a lot for an encyclopedia," she said. And also during the past year, the 
encyclopedia has received three state and national awards. The most recent 
was announced this month when the site was named winner of the Helen and 
Martin Schwartz Prize for Public Humanities Programs, which recognizes 
creative examples of projects by state humanities councils.

"We were surprised," Caudle said. "This is the closest thing to a peer 
review that we have had."

The encyclopedia is a project of the Georgia Humanities Council working with 
the Governor's office, the University of Georgia Press and the University 
System of Georgia. The offices are in the Main Library at UGA.

In addition to this national award, the Georgia Historical Records Advisory 
Board honored the site for "excellence in documenting Georgia's history" and 
early in the year, Library Journal, a publication on reference sources, 
named it the "Best Reference Source on the Web for 2004."

The Library Journal's award and others were "an affirmation of the care that 
was taken to build the site the way it was built," said Jamil Zainaldin, 
president of the Georgia Humanities Council in Atlanta.

Zainaldin, who described the site as academic but user-friendly, said 
university officials now are working with the Department of Education to 
connect the site with school curriculum.

Caudle said the site receives lots of feedback from viewers, including those 
commending the site, those who ask that information be checked again (which 
it often is) and those suggesting articles to be included in the 
encyclopedia.

"We know people around the state are using it," she said. "One thing we 
track in our statistics is institutional usage, so we do know the school 
systems are using it."

In fact, those putting the site together have encouraged schools to use the 
site. They have partnered with Scholastic, a publisher of teaching guides 
and materials, which gets the message to most schools.

The Web site was launched in February 2004 with 200 articles, but since then 
another 1,200 articles have been added.

UGA history professor John Inscoe is the general editor, and he sets the 
standard for the content, Caudle said. He reviews every article entered on 
the website. In fact, the whole staff participates in reviewing the content 
before it is posted on the Web.

Other staff members include Melinda Smith, the media editor who researches, 
acquires and formats media for the Web site, and Sarah McKee, the electronic 
editor, who edits and loads the articles. Other editors assisting are Kate 
Howard, Mary Koon and Liz Vasconcelos.

Caudle said future plans for the site include a media center, where a viewer 
can look at just the media on the site.

"Another thing is we'd like greater interactivity on the site. For example, 
interactive timelines on maps, where you could build your own map - show the 
major rivers and overlay that with the major highways," she said.

Currently, the staff is working with Georgia Public Broadcasting on a 
project in which volunteers read historical documents that can be heard from 
the Web site. The viewer can click and listen to, for example, Henry Grady's 
New South speech or a poem by Sidney Lanier or Civil War diaries.

"That's a nice public collaboration we are doing and we'll make the clips 
available on the GPB site and our own site," Caudle said. "It can have 
classroom applications, but also just for enjoyment."

And for students such as those in New's class, researching a topic can be an 
enjoyable break from the standard text book.

Top 10 subjects visited on www.georgia encyclopedia.org

1. Atlanta

2. General Sherman's March to the Sea

3. University of Georgia football

4. Martin Luther King Jr.

5. James Edward Oglethorpe

6. Savannah

7. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport

8. Cotton

9. Ray Charles

10. Brunswick stew


Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 012306



Bert New
Watkinsville, Georgia
Proudly Serving You Since 1964!


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