Thing 22:  Teaching & Learning with Primary Resources

I am so glad I decided to learn a bit more about primary resources for teaching and learning!!  Sometimes we librarians think we know all the best sites - such as the Library of Congress and various databases that provide some primary resources, however, I now have some really good sources to share with the teachers at my school.  

First off, I was fascinated to see the real "Green Book" used by African Americans during the Jim Crow years - our students study and write papers about this time period every year.  By coincidence, there is a very popular movie showing titled "Green Book" that I am going out to see tonight & I had no idea why the movie had that title until now.  Wow - I am learning something important that I can share at school and it will be incredibly useful and interesting to share this primary resource supported by the New York Public Library.  

I also enjoyed reading the article by Hayley Glatter in the Atlantic magazine about using primary resources in the classroom to teach about current events - which are so relevant to the students at our school.  Specifically, teaching about the Black Lives Matter Movement.  Most textbooks are too out-of-date to discuss current events or to compare the past to things that are shaping our world today.  Primary source documents, such as current news articles, can provide information in an objective format allowing students to form their own critical evaluation of the information.  I love the quote in the article that stated "No one reads a textbook as an adult, - What do you read? You read the newspapers, magazines, and (Social Studies is) basically based on news." In addition, Common Core Learning Standards demand the use of more primary sources in education.  Note:  I realize news articles are not all primary sources...just the articles that describe the event as it happens on the day or time period in which it happens.

Some new sources that I came across were compliments of Larry Ferlazzo, an educator and prolific author of educational materials.  His fantastic compilation of websites for topics covered in the high school classroom were awesome!!  I especially liked his Websites of the Day and Best of the Week Websites.  I found some unique sites that I have never seen before.  I bookmarked his main website and will be passing Larry's website on to the teachers at my school.

The new apps by the Library of Congress were fun to play around with;  Engaging Congress and Eagle Eye both seem like resources that can be used for our high school social studies classes.  I really liked the Engaging Congress app, although it may be a little challenging for secondary students.  The trivia questions are presented a little like the online game Kahoot - which is well-loved by students.  I thought the video stories were fun with cartoon images explaining historical events and users can answer questions interactively by moving the correct responses into place.  I would recommend this app to anyone interested in learning more about the U.S. Government.

Eagle Eye was a user-friendly interactive game where the user can sort primary source images into the correct area or put primary sources in the correct order.  To do this, the user needs to take a closer look to get the correct answers. It is in this way the user learns about the source as he/she is sorting through.  This seems like a middle school activity, but it can still be great for getting high school students to take a closer look at primary source documents.  Teachers can create an account and do more, such as create individualized lessons.  Video instruction is included with tips and other suggestions that teachers may need to use this site.

Lastly, I took a good look at NY Heritage and the Digital Public Library of America.  I was aware of both sources and determined that I definitely needed to add DPLA to my library webpage for the primary source sets which were quite impressive!  NY Heritage was limited as I did not find what I was looking for by doing a search and if I had a hard time finding a specific image or related document, then the students would not find it either.  Compared to DPLA, it is not user-friendly, nor does it have enough collections of interest for the high school.