Batavia students create virtual guide to Kane County Veterans Memorial

BATAVIA – Some Rotolo Middle School students are working on a long-term project to give people better insight into local fallen heroes.

In 2014, students in Julia Schaeffer’s eighth-grade social studies classes began a virtual Kane County War Memorial that provides more information, where available, on the veterans listed on the Kane County Veterans Memorial at the Kane County Government Center in Geneva.

The project is available to view on a public website – sites.google.com/a/bps101.net/kanewarmemorial – and the students continually update it, Schaeffer said.

Students have added links to relevant information on the veterans, created interactive maps, uploaded pictures and more.

The idea for the virtual project came from a class discussion about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Schaeffer said. She wanted students to create a digital companion to the Kane County Veterans Memorial in the same way people created virtual versions of the Vietnam memorial.

“First, and foremost, I would like students to see that history happens to real people,” Schaeffer wrote in an email. “That some of the people who died at these battles, like Pearl Harbor and Okinawa, were loved ones of their neighbors in Kane County.”

The students have been able to provide references or hyperlinks for 149 veterans listed on the Kane memorial, including all eight Spanish-American War veterans, 86 World War I veterans and 55 Vietnam veterans, Schaeffer wrote.

Students currently are working on providing information for the World War II veterans on the Kane memorial, she wrote.

There are nearly 850 names on the Kane County Veterans Memorial, and two more names will be added later this year, said Jacob Zimmerman, superintendent of the Kane County Veterans Assistance Commission.

Students are utilizing programs and various online resources to enhance the virtual memorial. Nathan White, 13, used CartoDB software to create a map for the World War I landing page.

Classmates Ethan Jonke, 13, and Cameron Green, 14, came up with the idea to use a QR code generator to create an image people could scan at the memorial so people can go directly to the virtual memorial on their mobile devices.

Jacob Zimmerman, superintendent of the Kane County Veterans Assistance Commission, said he will reach out this year to the Kane memorial’s sculptor, Guy Bellaver, to see how he thinks a QR code might be permanently added to the sculpture.

Zimmerman then plans to take whatever Bellaver’s recommendation is to the commission in the spring for final approval.

The commission members are pleased to see the students’ enthusiasm in history and hope more people follow suit, Zimmerman said.

Eamon Samsami, 13, led a group presentation on the virtual memorial in November to commission members. When Schaeffer presented the virtual memorial as a way to fulfill a project requirement in the class, Samsami said he moved forward with it because he thought it would be a fun and unique activity.

“I’m going to keep working on it as much as I can,” Samsami said.

Other students, including Elizabeth Shiver, 13, took pictures of some of the local veteran headstones in area cemeteries. Shiver said she like traveling to places in Kane County she had never seen before.

Schaeffer hopes that residents will contact her class through the virtual memorial website if they are able to share more about any of the veterans on the Kane County memorial.

“We would be interested in adding pictures and other information,” Schaeffer wrote.

On the web

To visit the virtual Kane County War Memorial created by Rotolo Middle School students, visit sites.google.com/a/bps101.net/kanewarmemorial.