Lost Kansas: Recovering the Legacy of Kansas Places and People

FAIN: HD-50630-09

Kansas State University (Manhattan, KS 66506-0100)
Bonnie Lynn-Sherow (Project Director: October 2008 to March 2012)

The development of an online repository that would enable students to use primary sources to document rural Kansas communities.

The Lost Kansas project utilizes our previous experience with undergraduate primary research to create an innovative student-directed digital classroom to create multi-dimensional portraits of lost Kansas communities. Lost Kansas will: foster a new culture of undergraduate research by creating a dynamic learning environment through digital technology; cultivate faculty dialogue about the benefits of interdisciplinary teaching through digital technology and establish engagement between the University and rural Kansans through an open source online repository for sources collected by students. This project will develop tools for preserving digital resources and using those resources for educating students and disconnected community members who will finally have access to their own stories. In short, the Lost Kansas project will become a prototype for an innovative new classroom/community outreach experience that can be adapted to other programs at Kansas State University and beyond.