I recently became more interested in exploring the Library of Congress both as a resource, an entity, and (because everything is right now) as a place to potentially work. Today I ran across this in my news feed: The Library of Congress Teacher's Page. It's intended to provide primary sources for the typical classroom lesson, and dabbles in most of the standard themes we all went through in school.
Several things struck me immediately. First, there are pre-constructed lesson plans available (there's not log in to the site, which is nice. Yay free information!). Now this may just be me, but I'd be irked if I knew my teacher was pulling something straight off the internet. However, using some of these for ideas and as support could be good. An example:
I'm interested in WWII, so I browse down the lesson plan list (by theme) to there, and find... mostly sources from the great depression. Hm. Actually there's nothing from the war in there, so I try "What is an American." This gets me a reference to de Crevecoeur (surprise), and some "life history" stories collected by the WPA. There's also an extensive, drawn out lesson plan, which (dear god) takes up classes from September to June! eesh. In any case, a teacher who knows what they want to present to the class could use the lesson plan themes to track down the sources. Kind of neat, but like most things on the internet, a lot of links to click through to find what you want.
A simple search using the search box on the front page brings up a few more hits for "World War Two", but it's still all within lesson plans and feels like it's being handed to me: This is what you should know! *ribbon on top* The point of the Teacher pages is primary sources, and if you dig a little you can get to a good chunk of information, but it can't possibly be everything the Library has. However, I do definitely support using primary sources for research, as they allow students to put more effort into reading and analyzing, unlike standard textbooks. Students will also get first hand perspectives and different voices from a primary source, which makes the experience of learning less monotonous, and hopefully more engaging.
Without the structure of a lesson plan, I think it's wildly entertaining to just browse the collections. And just in case everything the Library has isn't enough, they provide a nicely selected set of links from the outside.
Showing posts with label reference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reference. Show all posts
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Brevity and selection may be hard for me...
Alright, here's a post at last! I've been meaning to write an actual post for a while now, and have a list of subjects to discuss, but what actually spurred me to get all this down was a massive reading list on google reader this morning and a potential library job in my future. So, here's a run down of a few things I found interesting:
INTERNETS
Among all the sites on the web that "foster the qualities of 'innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration'" (according to AASL through SLJ) are a few of those that I've recently been prodding. Certainly most of the sites listed are more traditionally educational that Facebook, Google Reader and Twitter, but I appreciate the recognition of alternative learning resources. GReader and Twitter in particular are great for finding and following interesting feeds (and twits, as I like to call them. "tweeting" is just so... cute?). Clicking through links and finding more and more information can be very addictive, as demonstrated by the massive number of tabs I have open continuously.
Also on the subject of internets and social sites, apparently tagging is becoming important as a reader advisory (RA) practice. Being kind of new to this, I don't know much about RA in general, but I'd bet it's a lot about knowing your collection (and beyond) and being able to help patrons (or whoever) find things that are good for them. Apart from *actually* knowing every book you've got, there are always jacket blurbs and being familiar with an author, if not the book specifically, to help with advising on a reading choice. That said, if tagging were to be used on books, it would be.. why, it would be like the subject index in the card catalog. No? Nevertheless, imagine having a tag cloud for your library, like mine, here and having everyone find books they might like through it.
BOOKS
In my absence from the public library scene, it appears that a new genre has developed. Mostly blamed on the massive trend towards porphyria in fiction, urban fantasy also covers other elements of fantasy in a gritty, reality-based settting. Presumably, this brings the traditional fantasy world closer to home, elevating the believability factor and perhaps making it easy to approach for readers today.
Here's a list of books about, well, books, from Library Journal. I can't say a lot about it because I haven't read them yet, but several will certainly make it to my (epically long) "read right after I've read all these other books" list. Someday, someday.
INTERNETS
Among all the sites on the web that "foster the qualities of 'innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration'" (according to AASL through SLJ) are a few of those that I've recently been prodding. Certainly most of the sites listed are more traditionally educational that Facebook, Google Reader and Twitter, but I appreciate the recognition of alternative learning resources. GReader and Twitter in particular are great for finding and following interesting feeds (and twits, as I like to call them. "tweeting" is just so... cute?). Clicking through links and finding more and more information can be very addictive, as demonstrated by the massive number of tabs I have open continuously.
Also on the subject of internets and social sites, apparently tagging is becoming important as a reader advisory (RA) practice. Being kind of new to this, I don't know much about RA in general, but I'd bet it's a lot about knowing your collection (and beyond) and being able to help patrons (or whoever) find things that are good for them. Apart from *actually* knowing every book you've got, there are always jacket blurbs and being familiar with an author, if not the book specifically, to help with advising on a reading choice. That said, if tagging were to be used on books, it would be.. why, it would be like the subject index in the card catalog. No? Nevertheless, imagine having a tag cloud for your library, like mine, here and having everyone find books they might like through it.
And also in the world of reference and internet and research, credo reference is gathering reference engines and working with IP adresses to make getting access easier. Haven't had a chance to look into it yet, but definitely something to keep in mind.
BOOKS
In my absence from the public library scene, it appears that a new genre has developed. Mostly blamed on the massive trend towards porphyria in fiction, urban fantasy also covers other elements of fantasy in a gritty, reality-based settting. Presumably, this brings the traditional fantasy world closer to home, elevating the believability factor and perhaps making it easy to approach for readers today.
Here's a list of books about, well, books, from Library Journal. I can't say a lot about it because I haven't read them yet, but several will certainly make it to my (epically long) "read right after I've read all these other books" list. Someday, someday.
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