America was already 200 years old when Paul Revere took his famous midnight ride!

America was built by people of vastly different backgrounds with one primary trait in common: a thirst for freedom, justice and liberty. It is the thread that holds us together to this day. Yet the founding of the “new world,” and the two centuries of events that lead to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and ultimately to our way of life today, is a tale seldom told. The Story of America Project is on a mission to change that.

“Miss Betty’s Story of America” videos are the bedrock for the larger
Story of America Project,
a coordinated, multifaceted program of media, events and interactive games and lessons including:

A SEVEN EPISODE TELEVISION SERIES
(click here for episode descriptions)

A dynamic website designed for classroom use

A critical component of any national education program is a well-planned and executed outreach and promotion plan. Ours is being developed and managed by Digital Learning Group (DLG). The plan is designed to reach existing and emerging audiences across both elementary and middle schools. Teachers will have easy access to the “Miss Betty” videos either on the web or through a broadcast medium such as PBS local station feeds to the schools. By including lesson plans that infuse technology and web 2.0 tools, we will offer teachers and library media specialists a ready-made package to plug into their schedules over the course of the school year.

DLG will create a small advisory board of diverse experts (historians, teachers, media professionals, etc.) who can offer input into all phases of the project including content development, user interface design as well as outreach and promotion. DLG will insure that the program includes local history museums and historical societies, establishes educational resource networks, plugs into the statewide initiatives of Teaching American History Projects sponsored by the US Dept. of Education, banner ads strategically placed on sites like Edutopia and PBS, and social networking sites that are popular with young people, such as Facebook and YouTube.

The Story of America Website will be developed by the highly skilled Bean Creative team to compliment school curriculums with the goal of being so captivating that kids choose to return to it even when they aren’t in the classroom.

Over the past 12 years, Bean Creative has teamed with some of the top educators and nonprofits in the world to produce a wide range of successful, visionary web projects to meet the needs of parents, teachers and kids. In each case Bean Creative has examined the online needs and goals of the target audience, developed project specifications and curriculum and produced deeply interactive and engaging sites that continually raise the bar for online educational initiatives.

A "HANDS-ON" MOBILE MUSEUM EXHIBIT

This traveling exhibit will allow kids to experience the same early American history seen in the series, website and video game but up front, hands-on and personal, including:

FUN FACTS -- such as Why were streets made from cobblestones? or Where did the saying, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite' come from?

DAILY LIFE -- Why did people dress the way they did? Did all kids go to school? How did rivers affect where people lived and what they did for a living?

CHARACTERS & GREAT STORIES --The stories behind a fascinating assortment of well known and little known historical characters.

The STORY OF AMERICA Mobile Museum is being designed and built by the experienced team of Rick Harrison and Ryan Karanovich, whose previous exhibits have ranged from King Tut's Tomb to extensive Civil War displays.

An exciting and educational online video game,
“Miss Betty’s Challenge!”

This fun and educational video game being developed by Bean Creative is composed of various missions to be accomplished at each location in the series. The game will introduce kids to different aspects of early American life and focus on stories about the important characters who helped shape our nation. The high-tech nature of the game’s design allows for different tracks based on age and grade, with varying levels of complexity.

A password-protected PDA “BettyBerry” will be offered on the website to aid in classroom use and further involve the kids. The PDA will allow students to answer curriculum based questions, print resources for use in the classroom and save their progress in the video game. This device gives the kids incentive to return to the game on their own time. The more they play – the more they learn! CLICK HERE FOR A DEMO OF THE GAME.