Blast from past for youngsters

There are so many ways in which history can be learned: One can read it in books, or watch documentaries, or visit history Web sites, or tour historical locations.

The children at Horizon Charter School, however, decided to learn their history lessons in a unique way.

The students researched and filmed a documentary on the history of Nevada City and even enacted historical occurrences for the movie. According to Maria Blix, the Grass Valley coordinator for Horizon Charter School and the instructor of the video production class, students spent more than 150 hours to finish the 30-minute documentary which they named “Gold, Greed & Glory: A History of Nevada County.”

“It’s easier to learn about stuff when you’re hands-on,” said Kelsey Nelson, a 12-year-old sixth grader at Horizon Charter School. “If you read it in a textbook you may forget it, but when you do it yourself, you always remember it.”

The documentary was the outcome of a project about preserving local history offered by the Placer County Office of Education. The latter offered six eight-hour classes once a month, that Blix attended. There she learned the video production software and taught the same to her students.

“It was learning about uploading the film from the camera into the computer, importing pictures, doing sound-overlays ... of course the kids did it all and I watched,” Blix said.

The main purpose of the project was to incorporate technology into the classroom and help the students learn about the three cultures — Cornish miners, Maidu Indians, and the Chinese workers — that were a part of the history of Nevada County, Blix said.

The documentary includes interviews with Sibly Hansen, whose family came from Cornwall; Alice Yun, whose ancestors immigrated from China; Don Ryberg, chairman of the Maidu Indians; Charlie Schultz, a local miner for more than 50 years; Phillip Choy, president of the Chinese Historical Society in San Francisco and several others.

The students took field trips to the Nevada City Railroad Museum, Malakoff Diggins, Bear Valley, and Sixteen to One Mine to get a first-hand idea of the local history. They also referenced more than 13 books from the Doris Foley Library of Historical Research and the Searls Library and bought old photographs from local historical societies.

“This was above and beyond the regular school work,” Blix said. “It was very technical and these kids figured it out on their own.”

Naomi Cook, 15, a 10th grader at Horizon Charter agreed.

“We explored the program (Windows Movie Maker 2) and we tried to do it a bunch of different ways and found out which one works the most,” Cook said.

Improvisation was common. At one point in the documentary when there was a need for the sound of a loud explosion, the children taped an explosion from a Hollywood movie and used it.

“We are going to apply for a school grant through the History Channel because video production is an expensive class,” Blix said. “Placer County Office of Education gave us the camera to use. My school was supposed to come up with the laptops for the kids to use. So my goal is to apply for this $10,000 grant to get five laptops, five cameras, and have all the equipment we need, instead of one camera and one laptop which made it very difficult at times.”

Parents as well as Blix paid, at times, for the miscellaneous costs not covered by the school. But for Blix and the eight children involved the hard work has paid off.

“They are going to remember this for the rest of their lives,” Blix said. “This is like history coming alive for them.”

Kelsey Nelson, a participant in the project, summed up why she felt making the documentary was a memorable experience.

“Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I might remember,” she said, “let me take part in it and I’ll remember forever.”

<I>To contact staff writer Soumitro Sen, e-mail soumitros@theunion.com or call 477-4229.</I>