Exploring Documents and Manuscripts & DBQs

Many of my young students come to school with a lot of baggage: some are transients, living in shelters, some have parents in prison, some are living with grandparents, and some come from homes that are just struggling to keep their heads above water. All of this has been exacerbated, of course, by the downward spiral of our economy.

In contrast, I also have students whose parents are successful professionals or artists. These students have many more opportunities outside of school for intellectual and creative pursuits. These students, for the most part, come from stable homes, with doting, supportive families.

This dichotomy presents all of us in my building with unique challenges. How can we prepare all of our students to be life- long readers and learners? How can we instill in them the love of learning- even if it isn't reinforced at home? How can we help students develop the confidence they need to ask questions?

One of the ways we can do this is find a way to integrate primary source materials into the curriculum. Why should students read textbooks that describe people, places and events? They should read these documents and draw their own conclusions. They should study the images and speeches to acquire a deeper understanding of their world.

Document Based Questions have become a major focus in schools today. These questions challenge students to organize, synthesize and analyze information. DBQs force students to think. In a way, students are behaving like detectives or historians as they ask questions that lead to more questions.

Some sample questions:
Maps- What kind of map? What was it used for? Who created it? When was it created? List 3 features that you think are important.
Photographs- What is the date of this photo? Who created it? What objects are shown? Is this picture posed or candid- How do you know? What are the people doing? How are they dressed? What questions does this photo raise?
Sound Recordings- Whose voice(s) do you hear? What kind of recording is this? A speech? An interview? a broadcast? Are there any unique qualities to this recording, such as background noise? Was there an audience present?
Documents- What is the title? Who is the author? What type of document? When was it published/created? Why was it written- what is its purpose? Who is the intended audience? Is this document typical or representative of this time in American history?

These questions are specific. More general questions that are being addressed by DBQs are: What do you see? What do you think? What questions have been answered? What questions remain unanswered and, therefore, require additional research?

My Field Trips Through American Memory

It is clear that when we talk about Information Literacy, we are focusing on providing our students with a framework for active engagement in learning. Cross- curricular activities that engage students by challenging them to use their background knowledge to arrive at new understandings, while learning new skills, is the goal for the 21st century school.

This summer, as I've been exploring the Library of Congress's American Memory, I've been thinking about my students. How can I use primary resources to help my students connect with history, with math, with science, with literature?

Eye Spy Math is a visual learning activity based on many recognizable historic photos of places in Washington D.C. and in other cities. This activity can be used to reinforce mathematical and geometrical terms through artistic expression. The geometric shapes and the location of these shapes could be translated into literary terms.

The photo and print collection is breathtakingly deep and diverse. The pictures of musical heroes, like Leonard Bernstein and sports heroes, like Jackie Robinson bring socio-cultural history to life.

The sound recordings are an amazing artifact to study. How people spoke, how they sang, what they spoke and sang about, how sound recordings were used then and now are all topics worthy of study.

The map collection is irresistable. Being able to zoom in and around allows the researcher to learn about the climate, the commerce, the population and the transportation.

The motion pictures are fun and it is fascinating to see the progression of the technology through the years, from the early silent films and animated.

There are repositories of primary sources all over the world. American Memory is our most ambitious attempt to preserve our history for future generations.

Primary Resources: Focus on Collaboration

I'm adding 3 new items to my list of what I've learned by exploring American Memory and reading the comments shared by my colleagues ...

7. Primary resources provide students with an opportunity to connect on an emotional level.
8. Primary resources make history come alive.
9. Primary resources can be used to initiate collaboration

Some thoughts on item #9: I believe that the library media specialist should be a leader in efforts to collaborate. In a perfect world, the culture of the school should support collaboration, but if that's not the case, then it is important to connect with a teacher who is ready, willing and able to collaborate with you. Then, the classroom teacher and the librarian can demonstrate the power of collaborative practice to the rest of the faculty. Also, don't be dissuaded by the lack of enthusiasm at first. Be persistent and have patience!

American Memory: Philly- Style

I've been using primary sources for a long time now. In my early years of teaching, my best source for primary resources were our field trips to colonial Philadelphia, best represented by the Betsy Ross House and Independence Hall. History really came alive for our students as they examined original documents, diaries and artifacts dating back to the birth of our nation.

Now, thanks to the Library of Congress, we have American Memory. American Memory provides free and open access through the internet to prints, maps, sheet music, written and spoken words, audio files and films.

As a school library media specialist, I have been aware of American Memory and have used it occasionally for several years. I've been given the opportunity to explore the site in much greater detail while taking the UWStout course, "Teaching Information Literacy with Primary Sources."

As I reflect, here, on what I've learned to date, one thought occurs to me: every document, every artifact, was created by someone that might have had a bias. Using a source like American Memory shouldn't be just about showing and telling, it should also be about evaluating the resources in context and with a historical perspective ... Critical thinking!

Here's what I've learned about American Memory so far:
1. I can use these resources with ALL of my students- Kindergarten through Grade 5.
2. American Memory is not an encyclopedia- it is a work in progress and new collections are constantly being added.
3. Exploring American Memory may result in some unexpected rewards, so it is important to approach research with an open mind.
4. Exploring primary source material adds another dimension to the study of history- a personal journal may, for instance, provide the "back story" to a historical event.
5. Primary sources can be explored in conjunction with a contemporary event, such as the presidential election of 2008
6. Original artifacts, photos, journals, etc. help tell the story and provide the potential for a more accurate interpretation of historical events.

This is what I've learned so far. Remember, just like American Memory, this blog is a work in progress.

Eyewitness to History

As a history buff, nothing gets my research chops going like visiting a site where an historic event took place, like the field at Gettysburg. I've been meaning to explore how primary sources can be incorporated into the curriculum and the course I'm taking now has already showed me that there is a rich collection of primary source material out there for the discovering!

We began by defining primary sources. They are bits and pieces of history that can be in a variety of formats: documents, recordings, photos, diaries, letters, etc. These artifacts can be used to fill in the blanks and help students connect with a particular historical period or we can ask students to do the research to fill in the blanks. Either way, there is no doubt that history comes alive when we incorporate actual historical artifacts and we are providing students with an opportunity to develop their critical thinking skills- the essential component of information literacy.

We learned a lot from visiting the American Memory Learning Page "house." Listening to the audio tapes showed us how difficult dialects can be. The various items in each of the houses inspired lots of questions and we made judgments about what aspects of this exercise we might use with our students. The tour through the Library of Congress' primary sources actually caused me to reminisce and connect with many of the artifacts. Also from the site, there is a student activity that I found fascinating. It is called the "Mindwalk Activity." This exercise allows you to discover what the limitations of historical records can be. After mindwalking through all your activities over the last 24 hours, you are asked to reflect on what traces of your daily activities might remain and become artifacts for historians of the future.

The issue of equal access to technology was our next issue and we discovered that as more students are getting access to computers, either at school or at home, the problem of cheating and plagiarism has also increased. We also had a discussion about teachers using technology as an administrative tool, rather than a teaching too. We all have seen evidence of this.

Finally, I once stayed in a hotel room that I think could be classified as a primary resource. The Watergate break- in occurred the summer before I was to begin my junior year of college. About 3 months after the event, I visited some friends for a weekend in D.C. I stayed in a Howard Johnson Hotel across the street from the Watergate building. When my friend and I got up to our room, we discovered, much to our horror, that the ceiling had been ripped up, exposing pipes and lots of other nonsense. We called down to the front desk to complain. We were told that the room had been closed for many weeks because of the evidence it provided to the Watergate investigators. It had just been reopened several days earlier. It seems that we were staying in the room where the burglars had installed their bugging equipment. What do you think? Hotel room as primary resource?

Pew Again

Back In February, I wrote about a Pew study on libraries that revealed some interesting data on Gen Y and how much time they spent in libraries. This survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that young adults aged 18 to 30 frequent public libraries more regularly than older people.

It's just come to my attention that the news Hour with Jim Lehrer highlighted this topic of library usage in the age of personal computers and the Internet, by featuring essayist Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune, on March 13. Keller reflected on the road ahead for public libraries in the modern era. Go to: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june08/libraries_03-13.html, for the complete transcript.

One remark by Keller that really stood out for me was: "No matter how zippy our computers, no matter how much data is available to us wherever we happen to be, there will always be a reason to go to the library."

Yeahhhh.

Am I Still Making A Difference?

I had lunch with an old friend today. After we caught each other up on our respective spouses and children and others, we spoke about our professions. Melissa is a graphic designer of textbooks. Her husband teaches Biology at Villanova. Our academic connection is just one of the many reasons we are friends. Melissa has always been a great sounding board for me and I've spoken with her many times about my duel professions: librarian and teacher.

I've talked about how hard I have to work be proactive in staying connected to classrooms and other special area teachers. The rigid schedule of classes that we specialists deal with, is not conducive to establishing collaborative practice.

I've talked about budget cuts. It's a challenge to remain visible and vital, but I have to, in order to fight for every dollar. In this age of budget slashing, I'm trying harder than ever to encourage my students and teachers to use subscription databases and spend more time in the library.

I've talked about how hard I've worked to stay relevant: video conferencing, blogging, and podcasts are becoming an increasingly important part of my program.

I've talked about the efforts I've made to offer staff development to acquaint them with the library's resources, in the hopes that they will want to collaborate with me to plan lessons that will enrich teaching and learning.

Am I still making a difference after all these years? No Child Left Behind can be an obstacle to achieving the goals I've set out for my students and for myself. Or it can be an opportunity to shine a light on the library as the information hub of my school. NCLB includes a section that states that libraries are important: "... to improve literacy skills and academic achievement of students by providing them with access to up-to-date school library materials; technologically advanced school library media centers; and professionally certified school library media specialists" (NCLB, 2001).

I'm not a numbers person. I'm math- phobic. Thank goodness when I need to come up with statistics I can use Titlewise (from Follett). I'm never asked to produce data but I produce it every year at budget time. I'm learning to overcome my fear of numbers and plunge into the world of Excel in order to generate the data that I will most certainly need in the coming months and years for grant applications and for administrators who may not understand that the media specialist is still making a difference.