West Virginia's Appalachian Music and Literature

ABOUT OUR PROJECT...

West Virginia University and Bell Atlantic Corporation teamed up to sponsor the On-Line Multimedia Development Project. Responding to the increasing emphasis on technology in education, Bell Atlantic and West Virginia University designed this project with the goal of producing quality instructional multimedia material to be made available on the Internet.

Through this project, we were given the opportunity to develop a multimedia unit on "West Virginia's Appalachian Music and Literature." This unit offers a look at selected traditional children's music and stories from West Virginia that reflect Appalachian culture, showing the correlation of common themes in folk music and literature.

The authors of the unit, Reneé Wyatt and Avis Caynor, are teachers at West Milford Elementary School in Harrison County, West Virginia. Mrs. Wyatt is the music specialist, and Mrs. Caynor is library media specialist. Both have included Appalachian units in their curriculum in the past, but this was an exciting opportunity to collaborate on a team-taught unit incorporating both music and literature. They are grateful to Bell Atlantic and West Virginia University for allowing them to be a part of this innovative project.

"West Virginia's Appalachian Music and Literature" is designed to be used as a teacher-directed module or as a self-paced unit geared for students in grades three through five. The authors hope the user finds the project to be enjoyable and educational. Please send comments and/or suggestions to: Avis Caynor or Reneé Wyatt.

West Virginia's Appalachian Music and Literature is a self-contained teaching unit by Avis Caynor and Reneé Wyatt (last updated by them 11/15/97), reprinted with permission in 2003 in the larger web site AppLit.

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