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.