Graduate students led by Bill Lopez are taking modern technology to the grave

14 Dec 2012    

Graduate students led by Bill Lopez are taking modern technology to the grave.

After guiding classes on tours through Lincoln’s Wyuka Cemetery for more than 15 years, Lopez and students in the Master’s of Elementary Teaching program have researched the history of select graves and made that information available electronically. The information is accessed online through Electronic Quick Response Codes posted at Wyuka and a smartphone.

“What I’ve always wanted to do was start getting the students involved and finding information on the historic graves at Wyuka,” said Lopez, an associate professor of practice in Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education. “That got me thinking. Then I started talking to a guy I know who has a business here in town. I asked him about doing something to show off the students’ work online.”

The “guy” is Randy Kassebaum, who has developed the technology to imprint QR Codes on long-lasting ceramic blocks. Lopez and Kassebaum had partnered on three similar projects at Wyuka — the 9/11 Memorial; serial killer Charles Starkweather; and Walter Dameron, who was killed in a head-on train collision in 1911 in western Nebraska.

Read more at The Scarlet.