Redlands Unified goes virtual for Smiley Heritage Tour
Source: Redlands Community News
The Redlands Unified School district has been sending fourth-grade students on the Smiley Heritage Tour since the early 1980s. Due to COVID-19, last year was the first time students could not participate.
This year, the district decided to go virtual to keep the history alive.
“A whole grade level lost the experience last year,” said Jamie Cortz, director of instructional technology and accountability. “It was a big deal to the district, and when this school year began, all field trips were canceled again. So, we decided to make the tour virtual so students still had the opportunity to have this experience even though they can’t go in person.”
The tour is hosted by A.K. Smiley Public Library Heritage Tours. It features 17 historical stops around the city, such as the Library, Mill Creek Zanja, Burrage Mansion, and Kimberly Crest. Cortz said the district and library representatives Serena Davis and Tish Sandos spent six months collaborating to gather information, video, and photos for the virtual experience. It went live on the website in May, 2021.
“We made trips to locations and recorded drone footage,” said Cortz. “We reached out to people in the community to get voice audio and recreated the entire tour virtually. We even added ArcGIS elements and incorporated fun educational materials like an escape room game where students had to answer questions about the tour to ‘get off the bus.’ Our mindset this year was we didn’t want COVID to take away the tradition from kids, so we used an innovated approach to overcome it.”
Project leads Olivia Davison and Jennifer Hunt wanted to make the virtual tour as robust as the in-person one.
“It’s a half-day tour when kids go in-person,” said Davison. “We wanted all of the 17 stops on the virtual tour. However, on the normal tour, kids only get off the bus at six locations. A lot of it is driven. But we still wanted to incorporate all the locations and not take away anything. At the beginning of the virtual tour, students have a numbered map that shows all of the locations with facts about each.
“For the six stops, it is interactive with an introduction and welcome videos from library docents, photos, drone footage, and ArcGIS story maps. We went to each stop and took 365-degree images of every room the students would see if they were off the bus. We added click points to take them to new rooms and give information about each. Not only can they see outside but inside of the buildings as well. We also got students to narrate some of the information.”
Davison said the virtual tour was made as inclusive as possible.
“For our English as a Second Language (ESL) students, they can have all of the text on the screen read to them by a digital translator,” she said. “They are able to choose the language they want which was something they couldn’t do on the in-person tour.”
Unlike the in-person tour, the virtual tour is available for students to take on their own time, as many times as they want.
“We made the map easy to follow so students could drive along with their parents if they wanted,” said Davison. “We actually got quite a few emails from parents saying they did visit the locations in-person.”
If possible, the district is hoping to resume the in-person tour next year. But have no plans to take the virtual tour down.
“We see this as more of a community resource now,” said Cortz. “Kids can look at it prior to the field trip and get excited, but also families can share this with kids of all ages. Even adults are interested.
“We have talked about sharing this with our new teachers when they are hired so they can virtually tour the city and know a little bit about the community.”
As of June 2, 2021, the virtual tour has hosted almost 7,000 visitors.
To take the virtual tour, visit https://sites.google.com/redland…/smiley-heritage-tours/home
For more information, or to volunteer with Smiley Heritage Tours, contact smileyheritagetours@akspl.org.
My telepathic powers tell me you are skeptical about these alleged “cool” prizes. Would a voucher for Open Door Escape Games for you and your friends excite you? How about a gift card to A Shop Called Quest comic bookstore? Would you enjoy a close-up look at the disturbing micro-organisms that surround you with your very own cell phone microscope? Does your mouth water at the mention of a refreshing pint of gelato from Happy Camper Creamery? Are you craving the special variety of brain freeze only a scoop of Salted Caramel from À La Minute can deliver? Is your stomach pitifully lacking a breakfast burrito from Burger Town U.S.A. right at this very moment?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then join the Dig Deeper Summer Reading Program immediately. All of these prizes and more are on the line exclusively for teens. To get started, simply visit the Young Readers’ Room at A.K. Smiley Public Library, pick up a Teen Reading Log, grab some books, and let your eyeballs do the rest. You could also download the reading log from the Teens’ page of our website (
My sixth sense indicates you are slowly coming around to this whole Summer Reading Program idea, but you still don’t know what to read. Teens, we’ve got you covered! From anime to career idea guides, the Teen Underground, located in the basement level of the Library, has something for you.
Teens, I don’t need a Magic 8-Ball to tell you that letting your eyeballs loose on some good books this summer may result in a win-win for you; not only will you be transported/enlightened/made brilliant by the pages you consume, but you may also end up with a mouth full of smoothie from Badger Bowls (yet another one of our cool prizes). Of course the rewards of reading transcend a paleta from Nicho’s Ice Cream or a street taco from Taco Shack (cool prizes numeros once y doce), but I predict you are open to a chance at having it all. You have two weeks left, teens…read with us! And I promise I will now stop reading your minds.
The grand prize is a $100 shopping spree at Gerrards Market in Redlands!
From its very founding, the United States had a precarious relationship with freedom. While the Declaration of Independence clearly stated that “all men are created equal,” the actual practice of enslaving people tested whether, in practice, that ideal could ever be a reality. Enslavement was the single most divisive issue of the early republic. When Southern states perceived that Abraham Lincoln’s election threatened what they believed was their “right” to enslave others, those states attempted to break the bonds of the United States to each other. The result was civil war, with some 800,000 or more Americans perishing.
Do you remember as a kid when learning something new was like having an “A HA!” moment? Well, those days don’t need to be over! Let the Young Readers’ Room non-fiction collection help add to your brainpower! We have an amazing collection of non-fiction titles to entice even the youngest of your family to browse the shelves and increase their knowledge.
Can you hum or sing along: “Take me out to the ballgame, take me out to the crowd…” its baseball season and we have “
“
Tiera Fletcher and Ginger Rue wrote “
My final suggestion for today is “