Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center (KTHC) recently received a $3,000 grant from the Rotary Club of Ridgefield to hire a consultant to help the Museum develop a digital storytelling strategy. By developing and using digital storytelling tools KTHC will be able to continue to expand its educational offerings, including increasing access to its programs.
In the 2016-2017 school year, some 1,500 school children from 17 Fairfield County schools, two-thirds of them from Ridgefield, attended programs at KTHC on three nation-shaping periods: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Gilded Age. The Museum aims to double the number of children to whom it provides school programs by 2020.
KTHC aims to improve learners’ access to and engagement with its educational offerings by delivering at least some of its content through digital media, which can include video, audio, photographs, and interactive web-based stories. These digital storytelling tools will also allow KTHC to increase its program capacity without exhausting its pool of trained school docent volunteers; in the 2016-2017 school year, 34 school program volunteers gave nearly 700 hours of their time.