Mark Guizlo, Geography and Geospatial Technology Program Chair at Lakeland Community College, Lisa Stanich, Geospatial Technology Program Assistant, and I met to talk about the possibility of bringing GIS into the curriculum of the Lake County Historical Society. We all felt that it was a perfect blend of history and technology that had previously been underutilized in this area. Now, thanks to the generous support of the Lakeland Foundation, that dream is coming true.

The overall goal of this partnership is to bring history alive in K-12 classrooms. With the GIS software, we can create story maps that illustrate anything from the movement of the Native American tribes in northeast Ohio to the settlement of the Western Reserve. We can show the growth and decline of economic development in and around Lake County through time, and we can map the Underground Railroad. All of these maps will be interactive, free to the public, and available on the Lake County Historical Society’s website. Through interactive exhibits, we can allow children to see what their backyard looked like in the 1800s.

Both Lakeland Community College and the Lake County Historical Society put education at the forefront of their missions. This partnership will bring an entirely new perspective to northeast Ohio’s arts and humanities education, and will create lesson plans for teachers that can be used at their leisure to enhance their classroom experience.

Starting this fall, we will be creating immediate and long-term deliverables that can be used anywhere from our capital campaign to our classrooms. Click on this link to discover how GIS is already being used in history classrooms and then let us know in the comments which were your favorites.

Did you know – the Lake County Historical Society already works with the Lake County GIS Office. In 2014, we digitized over 500 Cumings and Downer maps with the help of Lake County’s GIS department.

Submitted by Elizabeth Connor, Executive Director Lake County Historical Society