Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking Skills in World Literature (Libraries Unli

Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking Skills in Geography

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With the amount of time and resources allocated to teaching social studies being significantly reduced, social studies lessons need to be incorporated into other subjects. Notable Books, Notable Lessons: Putting Social Studies Back in the K—8 Curriculum offers the tools to teach students social studies concepts that are increasingly relevant and essential in today's diverse, globalized world—lessons that are vital in order to prepare students to think critically and participate in our multicultural democracy.

The lesson plans pose compelling questions to facilitate discussion and critical thinking and suggest engaging activities that are connected to the social studies concepts. The book also includes sample student handouts for the selected pieces of literature. Libresco is professor of social studies education as well as codirector of elementary education and of the minor in civic education at Hofstra University.

A Teaching Strategy Toolkit for Grades 7–12

She was a high school social studies teacher and lead teacher for elementary social studies in the public schools for 15 years. Her published work includes Exemplary Elementary Social Studies: Her publications include the new edition of Helen Doss's The Family Nobody Wanted editor and articles on adoption, African American literature, and public education policy. This book can help the classroom teacher and school librarian to transcend banal readers and prescriptive reading programs to introduce good, engaging social-studies books.

Although the tight lesson structure may seem limiting, especially the worksheets, they are an easy reach for the busy educator. Learning incorporates knowledge and social practice; digital libraries provide a new way to incorporate both of these ideas for learning Van House , As more students become Internet savvy, they expect to have access to digital resources in their learning environment Gunn , As more K classrooms use online resources and digital libraries, these students will expect to learn in similar ways when they become students in higher education.

Online and face-to-face classrooms in higher education need to incorporate new technologies, online resources, and better access to information.

Due to the digital and networked nature of many digital technologies, collaboration, just-in-time learning, and community building are components of learning that are supported by digital resources Pavani , Higher education should be harnessing digital resources in the classroom to encourage new ways of learning that build on the skills and expectations of the students. These resources can add value and increased functionality for learning through content sharing, interactivity, reuse, customization, cooperation, access control, and management.

Teachers who understand the power behind digital resources and digital libraries can enable students to learn more than the content of a course Kayser , These students will have increased motivation and greater skills to be life-long learners.

Putting Social Studies Back in the K-8 Curriculum

The TPS workshop received mostly positive evaluations and we continue to receive occasional enthusiastic reports from participants a year after the workshop as they teach others or create new lessons using TPS resources. While not all teachers had a chance to use their primary source projects in the classroom in the several months between the workshop and the focus group meeting, those who did were very positive about the results. They reported that students definitely were more engaged by class work that used primary sources rather than materials written second or third hand about topics and events.

Their interest sparked, they continued working with the primary sources rather than surf the net after they had completed assignments; they also asked more questions about the subjects. A few teachers had already taught their colleagues about teaching with primary sources, which is exactly what we had hoped would happen.

That said, there is room for improvement of the workshop itself, as well as a need to study the impact of teaching with primary sources on students.

Digital libraries are tightly coupled with technology and while technology wasn't necessarily on our workshop agenda it cannot be ignored. A few of the workshop participants found the technology quite challenging and intimidating, which reduced their enjoyment and learning opportunities. A future workshop needs to have technological ability expectations specified and can possibly provide pre-workshop materials to get everybody up to speed technologically.

Also, we should extend our section on primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Much to our horror, one of the workshop participants admitted still being unclear about the difference after the workshop had been completed. The workshop was intended for K educators with the goal to familiarize these educators with primary sources, the wealth of digital materials available to them, and how to organize and store them for continued use. We believe that students who are taught with digital materials are better prepared for college ACT , and future information use.

It makes sense to incorporate primary sources into higher education as well.

The workshop can easily be adapted for that purpose. The workshop as described in this paper was taught over the span of three contiguous days that required campus residency, plus a face-to-face focus group three months later. While we still believe this type of immersion increased collaboration between teachers, it excluded teachers who could not take the time away from home. To reach more teachers and allow for a more self-paced approach an online version of the workshop needs to be created. Using digital primary resources in the curriculum is not always an immediate fit.

While workshop participants in the humanities did not encounter any problems finding and integrating digital library sources into their classrooms, other participants were often at a loss. Also, teachers in the elementary grades had a more difficult time finding age and grade appropriate materials. Since time is a precious commodity for teachers, digital libraries with an educational focus need to consider providing clear connections between materials and the core topics. A good example of this type of work is the Curriculum Customization Service Sumner , Research needs to be done to make connections between core curricula, as expressed in state standards, and resources within a digital library that allow easy customization of these materials by teachers.

Truly integrating primary sources requires presenting the resource in context rather than a superficial or isolated presentation. Teaching educators how to find, organize and utilize resources is only part of the story. In future workshops we need to introduce how to incorporate primary sources effectively.

During the focus group and conference presentations, several workshop participants expressed that students were definitely more engaged with the material when primary sources were involved. While student engagement is certainly desirable, it is, as yet, unclear whether the students' primary source literacy also increased Archer et al. We intend to study the impact of teaching with primary sources directly in a future study. Finally, the workshop was advertised among students in the School Library Media Administration endorsement program.

Originally we required teams comprised of the School Librarian with at least one other teacher from their school but later modified this constraint, allowing one mixed team a school media specialist and teachers from two different schools to fill the final slots.

We had 31 applicants but could only accommodate Budget categories for planning the workshop were: The computer lab contained 25 dual boot machines allowing for Windows as well as Mac participants. However, the Mac mouse proved problematic for some of the Windows users. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anne R. National Curriculum Survey Investigating Primary Source Literacy. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 35 5 , History Teacher, 43 1 , Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology.

Library of Congress Information Bulletin, Virtual Libraries Supporting Student Learning. School Libraries Worldwide, 8 2 , Abraham Lincoln and his era: Retrieved June 28, from http: Education Digest, 75 4 , Primarily History in America: Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction. Social Practice in Design and Evaluation Diekema's recent work covers teacher information seeking behavior, educational standards metadata, and the evaluation of educational digital libraries.

She coordinates the digital repository and does outreach to faculty on author rights and open access initiatives. In her doctoral work she has designed curriculum and taught workshops about the Instructional Architect for K teacher professional development, specifically on integrating technology into the classroom. She also coordinates the School Library Media Administration program. Here participants would handle tangible primary sources such as handwritten letters and diaries, oral histories, photographs, the skull of the area's last grizzly bear, pottery shards, clothing, and more Demonstration of three diverse tools for collecting, organizing, and presenting digital primary sources: Introduction Digital resources on the web realize full potential only when they are found and used in a meaningful way.

Background The Library of Congress LoC helps teachers enrich their teaching by showing them how to use the many digitized primary sources available from its American Memory digital collections. With all of the above in mind, we organized a three-day workshop for 25 participants as follows: The workshop curriculum was developed with the following learning outcomes in mind: Understand the nature and significance of primary sources and how they differ from secondary sources Identify and select digital libraries with relevant primary source content Formulate information needs and possible search strategies based on core curriculum Browse and search various digital libraries for relevant content Organize, store and annotate retrieved digital content for future use Create primary source sets to produce quality instructional content that engages students' interest Collaborate with school librarians and teacher colleagues to find curricular content resources to combine with accompanying effective teaching strategies Integrate digital primary sources into the curricula of participants' school Foster development of critical thinking skills in students by incorporating primary sources into teaching and providing analytical support Share content with local and national educators on educational websites.

Be clear about what you expect from workshop participants from the very beginning - when first advertising it on through to the end.

Understanding Government Information

Don't let technology become a barrier in what is being taught. Work around teachers' schedules; don't expect them to work around yours. Provide ways for teachers to see and handle original primary sources in libraries, archives, museums, etc. Don't let taking care of workshop logistics prevent you from devoting sufficient time to focusing on the course material, teaching methods, and assignments. Suit the Lab OS to the teachers and what they are most used to. An exclusively Mac environment will interfere with instruction and hands-on work if participants are PC users.

Make assignments due in the summer, soon after the workshop ends and before the fall semester begins. Predicting costs is difficult; be prepared to punt to make effective use of your money under sometimes unpredictable conditions. Analysis After the workshop we analyzed the focus group notes, student conference presentations, student reflection papers, and curricular artifacts ARS submissions to explore what is important to the digital library curriculum.

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Here is how participant 5 described her use of TPS and its impact on her teaching:

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