LIVING HISTORY: Eighth-graders at Cerro Villa Middle...

LIVING HISTORY: Eighth-graders at Cerro Villa Middle School in Villa Park soon will be using high-tech video cameras, computer compact discs, graphics and animation equipment to create “multimedia collages” depicting historical events. The project, called History Alive!, was proposed by teacher Judith Crum, who has won a $39,500 grant to launch it. . . . Crum is one of five California teachers selected this year to win a Christa McAuliffe Fellowship, named for the teacher-astronaut who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion.

NOVEL FRIENDS: Author Nina Vida of Huntington Beach says her close friendships with several Vietnamese families led her to write “Goodbye, Saigon,” a new novel about life in Little Saigon (E1). . . . Her close ties gave her an insight seldom afforded an outsider. “This opportunity does not arise because it’s a very closed society in which the family is everything,” she says. “Friends are friends only when they become ‘family.’ ”

SOUVENIRS: Orange County Superior Court jurors keep walking away with jury badges, so the court switched from plastic badges costing 19 cents apiece to the paper kind costing 12 cents each. A sign in the jury room warns of the costs associated with replacing badges for 1,900 jurors each week. “I think people just forget they have it on,” said Assistant Executive Court Officer Pat Hill. . . . “Unless they want it to remind them of how much they hated the experience,” she joked.