Digital Resources: LOC Teachers Page Put to the Test 

Everything old is new again—and that's a good thing! If you've always wanted to collaborate with your history teacher using the Library of Congress (LOC) American Memory Project, but felt overwhelmed by the prospect of having to actually develop lesson plans and collect all of the digital material needed, then it's time to revisit the idea of teaching with primary sources. LOC recently launched its new teacher resource page, making primary sources and digital content access even easier for K-12 classrooms.

Grade Level For use with students in grades 5–12+; lesson plans and activities available for classroom teachers and librarians.

Cost Free

The Big Picture Since 1995, LOC's American Memory Project has provided students, teachers, librarians, and history buffs in the U.S. and around the world with more than 15 million digitized items, including manuscripts, maps, photographs, sound and video records, and other documents. But despite the resource's quality and the ease of access to this magnificent collection, many educators are discouraged by the sheer volume of content available and the amount of time required to create a lesson using these resources.

Fortunately, that problem is, pardon the pun, a thing of the past. In July 2009, LOC released its new Teacher Resources module for the American Memory Project, which brings together collections of digital resources and provides not only Web links to those specific materials, but also detailed lesson plans, step-by-step procedures for teaching the content, rubrics for evaluating the project lesson, ideas for extending learning beyond the classroom, and correlations to national curriculum standards.

The new Teachers Resource module also provides information for educators on how to use primary sources in the classroom; how to evaluate documents, maps, and photos for information and historical evidence; and how to help students critically evaluate historical resources and learn how the past relates to current events.

Look and Feel For existing users of the American Memory Project, the new Teacher Resources page might easily be missed—the link to access the new content quietly reads: "Teachers." (The American Memory Project and LOC simply aren't the flashy, in-your-face types.)

Clicking the hyperlink that appears on the bottom center section of the American Memory Project Web page will take you to the new module and the primary source collections, lesson plans, and instructional resources.

How it Works On the Teacher Resources page, users can quickly select the content information available within any of the resource boxes. On the left-hand side of the page, a directional banner provides links to the various resource pages, as well as a search box. Within the main section of the Web page, users can access resource content from various sections, including Classroom Materials, Professional Development, News & Events, Using Primary Sources, Class Starters, and More Library Resources.

While each area is worth investigating, the Classroom Materials section represents the motherlode for classroom instruction. Here, digital resources have been divided into three categories: Primary Source Sets, Themed Resources, and Lesson Plans.

An alphabetical listing of all sets is available in Collection Connections. Here, ones that combine lesson plans and digital content are indicated to help provide for quick access to materials online, as well as related curricular plans.

Primary Source Sets covers specific topics, easy-to-print PDFs of the lesson plans and instructional content, as well as background information and tools to help students in evaluating primary sources. Sets include: Assimilation through Education (about Native Americans); Dust Bowl Migration; and Japanese American Internment. In addition to photographs and documents, sets often provide audio clips, which can be downloaded and saved for later use.

Within the Classroom Materials module, Presentations & Activities provides students and teachers with interactive content. Presentations offers a collection of digital resources along with lesson plans by grade level. In an Activities section, you'll find an interactive experience for several topics from political cartoons and inventions to songs from the past and even jigsaw puzzles.

On the home page of Collection Connections, "African American Odyssey" offers a summary and teaching resources.

Overviews of each collection detail the resource's history and content—a critical thinking component to use with student. A link to Arts and Humanities resources to extend the instructional opportunities is included, too. For educators who need to quickly snag specific instructional content, a link is available to save or print the Collection Connections content from that particular page as a single file.

As updates are added later this year, resources previously accessible from The Learning Page will be migrated to the new Teachers Resource page, along with additional lesson plans and collection content.

The Professional Development section of the Teachers Resource page is another area worth pursuing. Within this section, the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Direct link provides teachers and librarians with a step-by-step professional development handbook for using the American Memory Project and the new Teachers Resource module.

The TPS Direct PD activities help educators integrate primary sources into the classroom and help foster critical thinking skills among students. LOC's Professional Development content is relevant to educators across grade levels and content areas and can be used independently or integrated into an existing professional development program.

PD activities address how to analyze maps, musical scores, photographs and documents, as well as how to involve students in critical thinking. Activity pages within the Professional Development handbook can also be used with students as they evaluate primary sources.

For Students and Teachers Teachers and librarians who have used the American Memory Project in the past will find the new Teacher Resources module provides them with the instructional avenue that's been missing from this treasure trove of American history. With links to primary source collections, lesson plans, curriculum alignment to national standards and opportunities for integration with other subject areas, the new Teacher Resources module will make using these resources much easier.

Students will enjoy the ability to access the online documents, audio and video, and photographs found within the collection. Through the lesson plans provided for teachers, students can investigate history through the use of primary sources and begin to critically evaluate content. Classrooms with interactive whiteboards can use the primary source collections within American Memory in an even more dynamic way, allowing a unique opportunity to investigate digital resources in detail.

Report Card While the American Memory Project has always been a favorite among librarians and history teachers, the new Teachers page now opens up an entirely new instructional avenue for all educators and their students. By combining these digital resources into collections and providing lesson plans, curriculum correlations, and classroom extensions to the lessons, the American Memory Project's Teacher Resources page "brings the power of primary sources into the classroom" and definitely deserves an A+.