Roots with Wings, a Floyd County Place-Based Education Project:: Intergenerational Connections

Floyd Story Center

Since 1998, a community oral history collection partnership of the Old Church Gallery, Ltd., Radford University’s Center for Social and Cultural Research, Honors Program, Scholar-Citizen Initiative, Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center, and Floyd County High School. Our archives now hold over 100 interviews.

In our Roots with Wings project, college mentors, high school staff, and community volunteers meet weekly during the school year to teach the discipline of oral history collection.


Students learn ethical, methodologically sound interview techniques, practice and complete several interviews, transcribe the audiotapes, create searchable content logs, archive interviewee resources and period photographs, learn the technology of audio and video recording, research historical backgrounds, acquire proficiency in iMovie and storytelling, and finally extract a theme from an hour long interview to create a seven minute movie production.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

New Semester begins!

Meeting and Greeting All Around


Thursday, January 28th, our first day, we met with Mr. Worley’s high school video production class. We shared a full (and fun) “meet and greet” orientation with Radford University Sociology Department undergraduates and Floyd County High School students participating in the Floyd Story Center 2016 Roots with Wings Oral History Project.
Catherine Pauley demonstrates a neighborly greeting
This year’s theme focuses on neighborhood life and what it’s meant to be part of a community. Our team of seven RU students and sixteen high school students—a montage of freshmen to seniors—are preparing to investigate the traditions and gatherings of the region and the impact and influence that neighbors had upon one another. We hope to capture these historical treasures with our technology know-how and interview skills, which we will refine and develop through these next several weeks of training and practicing.

No comments:

Post a Comment