NKU launches Newport History Walk, a smart phone app for ‘museum without walls’ self-guided tour - User-generated content

Northern Kentucky University has launched Newport History Walk, a caller astute telephone app that takes users connected a six-stop, self-guided circuit of the stream city’s affluent and important history. At each stop, users tin perceive to a abbreviated podcast astir the historical site.
 
“Users tin conscionable drawback their astute telephone and their walking shoes and travel the representation connected the Newport History Walk app to six historical sites that assistance archer the communicative of our town,” said Newport Historic Preservation Officer Scott Clark. “Users tin besides instrumentality the circuit from home, but for the afloat experience, they should instrumentality this locomotion done history.”

The Newport History Walk app was co-produced by the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement and NorseMedia, some astatine NKU. Students wrote and recorded scripts for each historical tract based connected stories primitively written for “Our Rich History”, a play file published by the Northern Kentucky Tribune digital newspaper.

“The Newport History Walk is simply a designed arsenic ‘museum without walls’ that takes you to historical sites successful Newport and interprets those sites orally portion you are lasting adjacent to them,” said Mark Neikirk, the enforcement manager of NKU’s Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. “One of the main goals of NKU’s assemblage engagement is to find projects that supply an experiential learning accidental for our students but besides provides worth to the community. This task checks those boxes.”

The circuit includes stops astatine the pursuing historical sites: 

• The Southgate Street School. 
• The Taylor Mansion and Mansion Hill 
• Former Fourth Street School location. 
• John T. Thompson House. 
• Newport Flood Wall and the Flood of 1937 
• The erstwhile Newport Barracks astatine General James Taylor Park connected the Ohio Riverfront.

The Newport History Walk app takes astir an hr to implicit and tin beryllium done each astatine erstwhile oregon breached up into phases. The app beryllium downloaded from the iPhone oregon Android app stores. It is family-friendly, tin beryllium accessed immoderate clip and is casual to usage arsenic it tells the communicative of Newport’s spot successful the past of the region.

“Newport’s past is America’s history,” Neikirk said “At the clip the metropolis was founded, it was connected the occidental borderline of a caller nation. It was a frontier that was being settled, and adjacent aft it was settled the subject barracks was a staging constituent for the nation’s continued westward expansion.

“All of the themes of America’s history, including colony and taming of a frontier, slavery, immigration, westward expansion, industrialization, and formation from the cities to suburbs, and, today, municipality rebirth, are themes of Newport history,” helium said. “To recognize Newport’s past is to recognize America’s past.”

The Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement began focusing connected Newport’s Westside – Northern Kentucky’s oldest vicinity – successful 2012 arsenic portion of a long-term, place-based assemblage engagement inaugural that included exploring the neighborhood’s history.

After a postgraduate people successful section past began producing essays connected the neighborhood, NKU Professor Dr. Paul Tenkotte, a prolific writer and recognized adept successful Northern Kentucky history, committed to producing a twelvemonth of essays that were published successful the Northern Kentucky Tribune nether the “Our Rich History” banner.

A pupil intern, Shelby Doyle, worked with students successful Theater and Electronic Media & Broadcasting classes to nutrient scripts for podcasts connected the history. Ms. Doyle recorded the scripts by moving with NorseMedia, a pupil radical successful which connection majors nutrient audio and video projects arsenic a co-curricular activity.

The podcasts were paired with images from the Our Rich History articles, and past uploaded to the Newport History Walk’s app, which is simply a level created by www.stqry.com. More sites volition beryllium added successful the future.

“Newport was founded successful 1795, making it 1 of our region’s and our state’s oldest cities,” Clark said “By the mid-1800s it was a thriving, diverse, increasing city. In galore respects, Newport’s past is simply a microcosm of America’s history.”