Prince George's Information Commons

Prince George's Teens Study how to Improve County Schools

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:40:19 -0500

During June and July 2007, teens from summer programs at Thurgood Marshall Middle School and Kettering Middle School explored how to improve the Prince George's County Public Schools. They interviewed adults, collected and analyzed information, and created a public website that reflects many points of view. Please explore their work before commenting on it. This project was a partnership between Maryland-National Capital Parks and Planning Commission and CIRCLE at the University of Maryland.

Learn the Facts, Burn the Fat: Newcomers and Obesity in America

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:48:54 -0500

Students at Northwestern High School, working with adults from the University of Maryland, have created a flash movie that describes the changes in their diet after they immigrated from Africa, Asia, or Latin America to Prince George's County, MD. The movie is funny, but it's serious, too: the obesity epidemic is costing lives.

Click here to play the movie.

Soldiers from Prince George's in Afghanistan

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 11:55:28 -0500

The 352nd Civil Affairs Command, Army National Guard, is based in Riverdale, MD. Many of its personnel are currently stationed in Afghanistan and due to return home shortly. University of Maryland student Christina DeNard has collected background information on the unit and the US intervention in Afghanistan. She expects to interview members of the 352nd when they return to Prince George's County. Christina writes ...

a musical map of the County

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 10:03:12 -0500

University of Maryland student John Shiu has created a map of the county that depicts some of its cultural richness and diversity by allowing you to click on locations and listen to the music that is played in each place.

NASA's Goddard Space Center

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 10:00:28 -0500

University of Maryland student Curran Muhlberger spent ten days at one of NASA's premiere facilities, the Goddard Space Flight Center. Click to read his account of the internship program, which is also an introduction to what goes on at Goddard.

health resources in Prince George's County

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 09:52:37 -0500

University of Maryland students have created web pages about health institutions in Prince George's County. You can start at our homepage on health or go directly to these documents:

resources for children with autism, especially the Forbush School (by Suzie Farhang).

The availability of physicians in Prince George's County, and the connection between poverty and the location of doctors' offices (by Angel Chang).

Dimensions Healthcare System, which is by far the largest provider of health services in the county (by Sherie McDonald)

desegregation at the college level

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 09:43:59 -0500

Brown v. Board of Education & A History of Collegiate Integration, by Amii Follmer

As a student at the University of Maryland College Park and resident of the state of Maryland, it's almost hard to believe that I never encountered racism on a more personal level or had to deal with segregation until I came to college. The University, however, was not always so diverse. It was only in the later half of the 20th century that African Americans were allowed to attend the school, or even that white students were allowed to attend Bowie State University, the other public institution in Prince George’s County. As of today the University of Maryland College Park has a diverse student body but as I learned, things were not always that way.

Greenbelt, a planned city

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 09:34:44 -0500

Greenbelt, in Prince George's County, MD, is a planned city, built by the federal government in the 1930's according to innovative ideas in planning and social organization. Today, it remains a distinctive and successful community. University of Maryland student Erin Boyland has constructed a set of web pages on Greenbelt. Click to see her introduction, or go directly to her pages on Greenbelt's history, philosophy, art deco architecture cooperative, volunteer fire department, or bibliography.

historical fiction: desegregration through students' eyes

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 22:50:30 -0500

Mandy Fraser, a student at the University of Maryland, has written a short story about a pair of imaginary students--one African American and one White--who experience the beginning of busing in 1973. She explains ....

Prince George's County: The Beginning

Mon, 23 May 2005 01:27:13 -0500

University of Maryland student Toyosi Ogunkua has written this essay on the founding of our county:

Prince George's County, also known as "PG County," was formed by a General Assembly on St. George's Day, April 23, 1696. The new county was formed from the combination of lands from both Calvert and Charles County. It was named for Prince George of Denmark. The first people to settle down in Prince George's County were Native Americans, who arrived in Southern Maryland about 10,000 years ago. The first European who recorded a visit to the area was Captain John Smith, in the year 1608, through the Potomac River.

an oral history of desegregation

Mon, 02 May 2005 16:03:29 -0500

Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, MD was racially segregated until Bill Thomas became its first African American student in 1955. Some of today's Northwestern students interviewed Mr. Thomas and many other eye-witnesses to uncover the story of desegregation at their school. View their animated presentation and then proceed to see a timeline, interview summaries, and a discussion guide.

a portrait of the County in sound

Mon, 02 May 2005 02:37:22 -0500

University of Maryland student John Shiu has created a musical composition to portray Prince George's County, sampling sounds from Beltway traffic to the Goddard Space Center.

Listen in MP3 format.
Listen in .wav format.

fast food

Mon, 02 May 2005 01:53:18 -0500

Some faculty and graduate students at the University of Maryland have been teaching students at Northwestern High School to investigate the causes of obesity in their community. The students are taping interviews of fellow youth and will create an audio segment for this website to publicize their research results. To give them some data to work from, we surveyed all the students in the school's health classes. The response rate was poor, because students had to bring in parental permission slips before they could complete the survey.

Nevertheless, we received enough surveys to draw tentative statistical conclusions. Here is a suprising one. None of the 17 kids who said that they ate fast food every day are overweight (according to their self-reported combination of height and weight). However, 43% of those who said they eat "hardly any" fast food are considered clinically overweight.

archaeology in Prince George's County

Sun, 01 May 2005 17:51:08 -0500

Prince George's County has been inhabited by human beings for thousands of years. Today, archaeologists are uncovering evidence of Native Americans, European settlers, African slaves and free people, and later communities. University of Maryland student Curran Muhlberger has created a clickable map with the major sites.

asset mapping

Sun, 01 May 2005 16:43:18 -0500

"Asset mapping" means collecting information about the unusual, valuable, and interesting people, businesses, projects, or places in a community. In 2002, Professor Derek Thompson, a University of Maryland Geographer, wrote a plan for us that described how the assets of Prince George's County could be comprehensively mapped. See this PDF document for his report. Over the next year, students at Northwestern High School used interviews and other forms of research to identify and map our local assets. They made preliminary maps of the following communities:

(Please note that the information on these maps is dated and may not be accurate.)