What is Project NetGap?

The Onekama Consolidated School Educational Foundation was recently awarded a three year renewable $7,500 Community Based Organization (CBO) Learn & Serve Grant from the Michigan Community Service Commission. The grant will be used as seed monies to develop and implement Project Netgap, a multi-level, intergenerational service-learning project aimed at reducing the student-citizen generation gap in the Onekama/Arcadia Consolidated School District. The focus of Project NETGAP is to assist K-12 students in improvement of their technology applications and local history knowledge while developing their personal and civic responsibility.

Project Netgap has a unique multi-level design with junior high school students mentoring local citizens in the use of computerized technology & the internet. These community citizens will then each adopt-a-classroom, thereby volunteering to assist elementary students while sharing their expertise with local oral history information. The elementary students will in turn collect the oral history data and senior high students will publish this information using computerized publishing techniques. Future years will expand this model to include multimedia presentations and additional oral history information collection. Partnerships in this project include the Michigan State Cooperative Extension, Manistee County Historical Society and various community groups.

To fully develop the project, Onekama Junior High School students are looking for full-time or part-time community members living within the Onekama Consolidated School District willing to volunteer their time and share the history of the villages of Onekama and Arcadia from personal and family experiences. They are particularly interested in obtaining oral histories from these "community historians" regarding life experiences prior to 1950.

In Project NetGap, students of all ages are learning together

Project Timeline

I. Technology Education (Spring 1998)

• Students Learning about Senior Citizens
• Meeting Senior Citizens
• 7th Graders Teaching Senior Citizens

II. Classroom Mentoring (1998-1999)

• Senior Citizens Share oral histories with Elementary Students

III. Oral History Information Preserved

• The program continues as high school students use their technology skills to produce Wellsprings III.

IV. The project cycles to Phase I with a new group of middle school students & senior citizens.

April 1998, 7th Grade Students Prepare for Service Learning

May 1, 1998, Junior High and Seniors meet for a Coffee Break

Program Commitment

• Technology Education
• Oral History Publication
• Project Mileage
• Fun

http://www.onekama.k12.mi.us