For Immediate Release  
July 14, 2006
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High Tech Meets History as "Extreme Summer Camp" along
Journey Through Hallowed Ground
Leads Students on 175 Mile Tour of U.S. History

Waterford, Virginia – For two weeks, this summer, 26 students in sixth through eighth grades from Albemarle County, Virginia, public schools are participating in the "Journey Through Hallowed Ground Extreme Summer Camp," for hands-on lessons in American heritage.   From July 10 through July 21, locations along the 175-mile Journey Through Hallowed Ground (JTHG) will be where these students spend part of their summer vacation on a tour of U.S. history.

Along the path, students will record the trials and triumphs from the Revolutionary period through the civil war using state-of-the art video iPods and digital cameras to create a video documentary, or "vodcast," journaling their experiences. Their vodcasts will be shown on the last day of camp.

The students' mission as they hike, bike, canoe and pod along the Journey Through Hallowed Ground is to unlock the stories and lessons of our nation's history while working with expert historians, archaeologists, and national park service guides.

During the JTHG Extreme Summer Camp, students will engage in fun and intense learning activities such as attending classes dressed-up as school children from the 1880s in Waterford's Second Street African-American public school, biking to historic sites along the C&O Canal, role-play as cannoneers at the Antietam battlefield, lunching over an open fire before heading to an archeological dig, and canoeing the Potomac with a local historian to the Ball's Bluff civil war battlefield.

The camp is already succeeding in getting students engaged.  On the second day of the camp, Tyler Hooper, an Albemarle County public school student, who said he ordinarily enjoys playing video games and lacrosse, was dressed-up and given a role-playing identity and as “Earnest Johnston,” an 1880s student who spends his days skipping school to attend to his family farm.   He noted, "It's fun because the boy I'm role playing sure lives a lot different from how I do, and using the video technology really helps us learn about the history."

The program is being headed by Angela Stokes, a teacher at Albemarle County schools.  Ms. Stokes said, "The rich American heritage found along the Journey Through Hallowed Ground is something that has made and has shaped every day of our contemporary American experience.   By getting students engaged in this history in such an intense, real way, the Extreme JTHG Summer Camp is an exciting way to get students to realize that history is not just something from our distant past, but rather something that we live every day."  Ms. Stokes added, "Plus, it's just a lot of fun, too!"

Cate Magennis Wyatt, president of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, said, "The richness of American history along the Journey is what makes it such an exciting experience for all who visit it.   As the Extreme JTHG Summer Camp shows, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground is a unique and wonderful place where recreation and education combine to create real life civic engagement for students of every age."