ALBANY - A new and innovative educational website, known as The Legacies Project, makes its statewide debut in front of an audience of Buffalo-area educators and invited guests on August 12th at 12:30 p.m. The demonstration will be held at the Buffalo Professional Development and Technology Center at 150 Lower Terrace Street and is sponsored by the Archives Partnership Trust, Verizon Foundation, New York State Alliance for Family Literacy, and the JP Morgan Chase Foundation.
The Legacies Project website promotes learning and literacy through the use of historical records. It contains concise histories and document-based learning activities that trace the development of the Chinese and Latino communities in Buffalo, Syracuse, Yonkers, and Albany.
These histories and activities include definitions of important vocabulary terms and are illustrated with historical documents and photographs. The site also features downloadable learning activities that will assist teachers in developing their own individualized lessons based on other ethnic populations.
One segment of the website examines Buffalo's thriving Chinese community and the significance of the city's proximity to Canada on this community in the nineteenth century. Another segment focuses on the history of the city's Latino population, which now numbers over 31,000.
Using historical records to promote learning and literacy has several advantages:
o Historical records (diaries, letters, photographs, census records, etc) can be found in every community making learning relevant to real world experiences.
o Document-based instruction encourages the development of critical thinking skills: analyzing and comparing information, drawing analogies, identifying themes, taking positions on issues, and supporting conclusions with facts, examples, and details.
o Teachers can use the document-based activities to help students prepare for state assessments and New York State Regents exams, which support national and state educational standards.
o The project can also help adult learners, family literacy participants, and new immigrants read and speak English by providing them with interesting information about the experiences and history of immigrants, like themselves, who came before them.
The Legacies Project is the statewide application of a New York State Archives-funded project at Liberty High School in New York City. Educators at Liberty High used historical records from the Chinese and Latino populations to develop English as a second language curriculum for recently arrived immigrant students. Many of these students arrive in the United States illiterate in their native languages and have one year to become proficient in English.
The Verizon Foundation, the lead sponsor of The Legacies Project, supports programs that create innovative eSolutions, help bridge the digital divide, foster basic and computer literacy, help enrich our communities, and create a skilled workforce.
The Archives Partnership Trust is a not-for-profit organization established by the State Legislature in 1992 to support the programs of the State Archives. Those programs extend to every local government and historical organization in the state.
The goals of the Archives Partnership Trust are to increase citizen awareness of New York State's archival heritage, and raise private funds to preserve these unique collections and make them accessible to the public.
The New York State Archives preserves and make accessible the essential recorded evidence - past and present - of New York's governments, organizations, peoples and events. During 2003, the Archives is celebrating its 25th anniversary of ensuring that New York State's written past will be available to future generations.
At its Albany facility, the Archives cares for more than 140 million archival records of New York State government dating from the 1630s to the present. As a program of the State Education Department, the New York State Archives provides services to assist 4,300 local governments and 3,000 community organizations care for their records.