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The concept
For more than 5 years the Quesnel Museum & Archives and Quesnel Secondary School have maintained an active and developing partnership. Our simple goal is to place as much of the museum collection and archives onto the internet as possible. This provides exposure for the museum, better access to information for the public, and wonderful work experience for students in the Computer Technology Career Preparation program. It is far more interesting and worthwhile to be developing projects that will be actually used by other people than to simply complete assignments for the teacher.
The Career Preparation program requires that students complete around 100 hours of work during their grade 11 and grade 12 years. In our case most of that work is done by developing web sites for clients like the Quesnel & District Museum. In the midst of other projects it does provide the museum with several students a year who further the development of the online version of the museum.
The B.C. Heritage grant provided us with an opportunity to have 3 students work for the summer on digitizing the John Boyd ledgers from Coldspring and Cottonwood houses. "Digitizing" sounds like such a technical word but for our students it was simply hard work. They read the original journals, entry by entry, and transfered the information into a spreadsheet. Those were then coverted into databases that could be searched online. Though at times discouraged with the tedium of the work they carried on valiantly to produce this initial version.
Student Team
Sandra Fardal
Sandra, now at CNC, was the team leader. Skilled in art and in web graphics she helped to maintain our schedule and develop the overall design of the website.Susan Haluschuk
Susan's major passion is music but along the way she has squeezed in a great deal of computer learning. Along with a prodigious amount of transcribing from the journals she maintained our ongoing tracking of events in the Boyd family lives. She is in her grade 12 year at QSS.Sean Leifer
Sean is a drama person but again has managed to build in a great deal of computer skill over the years. He worked diligently at the transcription and the development of the time line for the project. Sean is in his grade 12 year at QSS.
Teacher Team
Bill Atkinson
Bill is the Information Technology teacher at QSS and responsible for the Computer Technology Career preparation program. He worried a lot and has spent much of the fall working out the final web design.Ron MacDonald
Ron is the librarian at QSS and a Social Studies teacher. He was repsonsible for overall direction of the learner's corner and for brainstorming ways to use the site in grade 10 classrooms.Dan Broderick
Dan is a social studies teacher at QSS. Having formerly taught at the elementary level he was responsible for ideas and projects for the intermediate socials classroom.Museum Team
Ruth Stubbs
Ruth is the curator of the Quesnel & District Museum & Archives and the mainstay of the whole operation. Ruth was responsible for overall supervision of the students during the summer and the concept development for the site. Ruth's creativity and drive are the cornerstone of the web development efforts.Leslie Middleton
Leslie is the assistant curator at the museum and though not directly connected with the site she was always encouraging everyone and helping out the students. She was responsible for teaching students archival skills and procedures.
