Training students at Vinton High School   Increasingly we are becoming a wired nation as new technologies become a part of school classrooms, libraries, and other community settings. However, having a new "highway" is one thing; having a reason to use the highway is another. Our goal is twofold: to encourage local people in our Appalachian, Ohio region to use the information resources that will be increasingly available to them; and by doing so, help build a renewed sense of community currently lost to many rural towns and villages in the region.

The Countdown To Millennium Project was designed to attract novices to technology by using a subject that most interests people everywhere--themselves. Southeastern Ohio towns have important cultural histories. Many of our senior residents were witnesses to events --the Millfield Mine Disaster, the birth of the United Mineworkers Union, the speeches of suffragette Frances Dana Gage, the legacy of numerous underground railroad sites, to name just a few-- that changed the nation’s history. Yet, as time passes, their stories are fading away. Through Countdown To Millennium's partnership with the schools, junior and senior high school students have gained exposure to local histories as they used information technologies to tell the stories of their elders. It is the premise of this project that the children will be the ones to take these technologies into the home and into the community. This approach builds on the strong family ties and interest in local history within these rural communities (many of the families here can trace their roots back to the mid 1800s). It gives local residents a reason to learn about and use advanced technologies because there is a down-home reason to do so.
Trimble students with their interviewee
Ohio University's College of Communication recognizes these dilemmas and wants to use the technological know-how of its faculty and students to serve the region where the University is situated. To do so it  parterned with Rural Action, a non-profit organization whose mission is to build sustainable communities in southeastern Ohio. The problems facing this region -- loss of a sense of community, low self-esteem and the multitude of problems associated with high poverty rates -- are not unique. They are problems that occur in many communities. The Countdown To Millennium  is a cooperative effort between Ohio University, and Rural Action  to address some of these problems in a way that will serve as a model for others. 

Many of the towns in Athens, Meigs and Vinton counties, the areas targeted by the project, were the "boom towns" of the late 1800s and early 1900s; generating great wealth from coal, oil/gas, clay, timber and railroads. They were home to ethnic immigrant and indigenous people, representing distinctive cultural heritages. But with the natural resources of the region now extracted and the industries and their wealth gone these communities struggle to survive. Countdown To Millennium gives school children the means to record those histories and provide them with learning skills necessary for their futures and opportunity to teach what they have learned to adults. When children can take parents to the local library or community center and show them the community profiles, the photos and interviews with grandma that they have helped to design on a Web page, the parents are exposed to Internet technology and the children gain a sense of accomplishment and self-worth.

With the help of faculty and students from Ohio University's School of Telecommunications, Schools of Communication and Development, Journalism and Visual Communications; middle school and high school students and their teachers have learned how to collect, graphically design and organize, record and technologically share these profiles in several interactive media formats.


CTM provided schools with multimedia training and equipment and also provides six communities with Internet connection sites. These will be the only public Internet access points in some communities. For the first time the people in these communities have Internet connections and training on how to use them.

The oral histories have become the foundation for a radio series, "Countdown To Millennium", that aired the fall of 1999 to count down to the new millennium. The series took these oral history interviews to a radio audience that covers one quarter of the state of Ohio and put these personal stories into a broader perspective to show what, over the course of the 20th century, southeastern Ohio has contributed to the nation. The oral histories that the students collected are part of an online "Living History Archive" of southeast Ohio history. After the initial airing of the series on Ohio University's AM and FM broadcast network, the individual features have been posted on the Countdown To Millennium web site and can be downloaded. Here visitors find the oral history collection and can read individual transcripts or add their own stories and comments via e-mail. In this way the materials generated by this project will have a life beyond the broadcast of the radio series and technology will become a tool through which professionals, community members, and school children can share and archive information.

A Countdown To Millennium Study Guide was constructed that provides ways for teachers of middle school through high school classes to use the radio series in their classrooms. The Countdown To Millennium Study Guide web site address is www.tcomschool.ohiou.edu/cdtm. The Study Guide includes a "how to" guide for the class to do oral history collection in their own community, interview techniques, videotaping procedures, and instructions on web page design,. Additionally, lesson plans in the Study Guide offer grade-appropriate classroom activities based on the radio series, assignments involving the application of interviewing skills, and additional research projects for developing a broader perspective on local events.


There were other outcomes from the project as well. The oral histories that were collected aid in the research for Rural Action’s Mural Corridor and Appalachian Action Theater. Schools can used the collected or histories as a research base upon which to build walking/driving tours, art/photo displays, etc.

Countdown To Millennium was a partnership between Ohio University, Rural Action, the School Districts of Trimble, Federal Hocking, Meigs Local, and Vinton County and the communities, of Glouster, Amesville, Kilvert, McArthur, Trimble and Pomeroy. The project was funded by grants from the Ohio University 1804 Fund, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Ohio Humanities Council.

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