Older residents, whose lives once seemed invisible to all but themselves, now have a documented and honored place in the region's history, expressed in their own words. Students have also translated and edited the transcriptions into narratives for publication in both English and Spanish. They are now being studied and used by children at all grade levels who have reworked them into fiction, artistic depictions, and even a television documentary which Edcouch-Elsa High School students produced for the local PBS station. Oral history documents are supplemented by over 700 archived historic photographs of local memorabilia and by a rapidly developing collection of videos and still photographs shot by student researchers in the course of their work. Fourth-grade student integrates oral history and family reminiscences with creative writing in her journal entries.
Students scan historic photographs to use on cd-roms and the internet.
In addition to learning useful skills, they volunteer in school-community efforts to narrow the digital divide. Community members provide refreshments at community workshop. When the oral history project first got underway, students started by interviewing their family or close friends. It took patience and the cultivation of relationships, one by one, to get potential subjects to understand what information the students were seeking and to respond to them with confidence. But as news of Llano Grande's oral history project spread, especially after the bilingual publication of the Llano Grande Journal, many would-be informants took the intiative and approached students with stories to tell and acquaintances to recommend.