How to Contribute: Schools
Maine Memory Network (MMN) provides diverse opportunities for teachers and students to engage, work with, and contribute to their community. For information about how to use Maine Memory content in the classroom, go to our Schools section.
Benefits of Participation
Projects related to Maine Memory give students the opportunity to:
- explore and interact with local historical collections
- partner with and learn from community members
- develop technology and a wide variety of other skills
- share their work and community's history with a vast and growing audience.
How to Participate
There are many ways to participate, depending on your teaching goals, the experiences you want your students to have, your students' interests, the amount of time you have, and the resources available in your community. Primary documents—original historical items including photographs, journals, letters, business records, artifacts, and much more—are the building blocks of Maine Memory Network and the foundation for all projects.
Most schools contribute in one of the two following ways:
- Sharing Collections: Working with an organization in the community that has historical collections, students identify primary documents related to an event or topic being studied, research and write about those items, digitize them, and share them online.
- Building an online exhibit: With the help of community partners, students identify a topic or event in the community's history, research and write about it, digitize related primary documents, and create an online exhibit that shares what they learned.
Getting Started
The first step is to do some initial project planning. The project planning process will help you clarify your goals, identify the type of project that would work best in your classroom, and develop a plan for moving forward.
- View the Project Planning Guide.
- See examples of projects other organizations have undertaken.
- Apply for a Consultation with MHS staff for detailed project planning help.
- Apply for a Grant to support your project.