FREEPORT — Carter Findlay of South Buffalo Township, Armstrong County, passes through Freeport every day on his school bus, but he was very surprised to learn about a distillery in town.

Carter, the son of Mary and David Findlay, said the Guckenheimer distillery on Market Street turned out 12,000 barrels of whiskey annually.

“(It was) one of the best whiskeys in the world at the time of production,” Carter said. “It also won top honors at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.”

Megan Foust of Buffalo Township, the daughter of Joy and Chris Foust, said the distillery started in 1857 and closed in 1918.

Carter was surprised such a major industry could disappear so easily during Prohibition.

“The federal government passed a law that took away a lot of jobs and industry,” Carter said.

He and Megan are among the eighth-graders this year at Freeport Middle School who learned about their town. Then they used that knowledge while learning computer concepts.

Now the distillery is a spot on an interactive map of the town at www.Freeportcommunity.com.

Visitors can select sites on the map to see photographs taken by students. Visitors also can hear students talking about four churches, a school, a hotel, two banks, a library, a clothing store and the distillery.

Two markers on the map link to information about a devastating flood in 1936; an early settler, Massy Harbison, who was captured by Native Americans and successfully escaped; medical doctor and prominent inventor David Alter; and the town's only stoplight.

Beth Zboran, business computing and information technology teacher at Freeport Middle School and Freeport High School, started the project for the eighth-grade computer concepts class.

“My objective was to find a way to use technology to connect — rather than disconnect — my students to their community. There is a very rich history in the town of Freeport, but I suspected many kids, and adults including myself, were not aware of it,” Zboran said.

The project grew out of Zboran's experience with The Fluency Project of the Carnegie Mellon CREATE Lab.

Zboran and Jamie Mitchell, who also teaches the required course, introduced technology skills including the use of microphones and audio files, cameras and image files, mapping software, file management and file sharing.

Then students used those skills to connect to the town. Freeport is part of the school district's name even though the district's schools are in the neighboring townships.

Zboran said students were able to produce something that people could use.

“It wasn't just an assignment,” she said.

Students received historical guidance about the sites from the Freeport Renaissance Association.

“We wanted to help in any way we could,” said Diana Rehner, president of the association.

The logistics were complicated. Parents of 150 students had to sign permissions. Zboran worked with the principal to make sure the teachers were free. Security officers were needed so large groups of students could safely cross the streets during their excursion to town. Teachers had to notify parents that their children's voices would be recorded.

The Freeport Renaissance Association stepped up to help with costs for transporting students from the middle school in Buffalo Township.

Zboran also had to think about students walking around town with cameras and recording equipment on loan from Carnegie Mellon University.

“I was nervous about everything,” Zboran said.

After visiting Freeport, the classes used specialized software designed at Carnegie Mellon University to link their photographs and recordings to maps.

“There were a lot of steps you have to take,” Megan said.

“What impressed them most of all was that we were putting something together for Freeport Renaissance, and it would go on their website,” Zboran said.

Recently Zboran and Kaylee Polena, a Freeport High School senior in a graphic design class, put all of the parts together on a large map at Freeport's Riverside Park. The map is a representation of the students' work.

The map includes QR codes. Zboran said these small squares are like digitized pieces of information that link to a website. They are similar to bar codes.

Using a free app that reads QR codes and their cell phone cameras, visitors can hold their phones to the map and retrieve the students' projects on their phones.

“We like to think of Freeport as the jewel along the Allegheny River,” Rehner said.

She was impressed by the class results and said the work fits well with the activities of the association.

“We are all about revitalization in Freeport on various levels,” Rehner said. “We do a lot of things to encourage people to come to the town.”

Zboran said people can use technology to tell someone's story and build an advocacy for causes.

“We're not just thinking about iPhones and our lattes, but we're thinking about people in need or people that have causes we can help. Technology can pull us together,” Zboran said.

“It was a huge undertaking and extremely rewarding and I learned a lot along the way. The teacher is still learning,” she said.

Now Carter wants to learn about the hotel.

“It very much interested me that our town would need a hotel,” he said.

Megan said, “I am curious about the junior high. I've never been in there.”

She said, “I thought it would be really cool that we learn about the town and we would have a connection with it when we were done.”

“I didn't know that Freeport was famous for anything,” Carter said.