INDEPENDENCE - The location and languages are different, but the story is still the same.

Country schoolhouses - whether in rural Norway or rural Iowa - played an important part in shaping the culture for more than a century. The role of those buildings in both countries was highlighted Friday in a conference on the need for one-room school preservation.

"Kids can learn more from history by actually going to these things," said Joyce Wiese, chairwoman for the Tama County Historical Society.

The conference carried an international flair as Leidulf Mydland, from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, presented research on country schools in his homeland. Norway is one of five countries known to have used the country schools for education.

Norwegian schools inside and out mirrored those seen in Iowa and the Midwest, except for a few differences.

"They are more or less equal," Mydland said. "A classroom is a room, and what more do you need?"

There are a few important differences, like the photos of King Haakon VII restoring Norway's flag in Olso after World War II instead of portraits of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

The rural schools gained importance in Norway in the mid-1860s much the same way they did in Iowa. But the buildings haven't enjoyed the same resurgence in interest as in the Midwest. There is a small effort afoot to restore schoolhouses in the countryside, but hundreds already have been destroyed.

Iowa, meanwhile, has wholeheartedly embraced its schoolhouse heritage.

"You are certainly number one in the U.S. in preservation and interpretation of schoolhouses," said Dale Williams, the director of a school museum for the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Williams was one of several in attendance looking to bolster ideas about how to make school preservation more meaningful. In Wisconsin, his group found ways to incorporate their museums into grade school curriculum. The plans even go as far as meeting state educational standards.

Local school districts in Iowa also have looked at the schoolhouse museums for educational purposes. Down in Tama County, Joyce Wiese said she's trying to get the Haven schoolhouse, southwest of Chelsea.

Wiese said she attended Whiskey Bottom schoolhouse in Tama County as a child. She said she enjoyed the one-on-one interaction the students had with each other.

"It was just like you were a family," she said.