>> Good afternoon, my name is Kathy
McGuigan, from the Library of Congress,
and I would like to welcome you to today's
professional development educator webinar.
And the title of our program
today is called, Foundations:
Analyzing Primary Sources
from the Library of Congress.
So, some housekeeping items before we get
started; we will be recording this program
and we'll serve the recording
as soon as we are able.
Participants in today's live program
are eligible for a certificate
of participation, certifying one hour.
So more on that at the end of the program.
You will have the opportunity to talk to
each other and to our presenters via chat,
and several of you have already
got started using chat and I want
to thank you for your active participation.
While I'm introducing today's program,
you can use the chat to tell us your name,
where you're joining us from,
and why you came here today.
Please check to make sure that you
select all participants in the to box,
the dropdown to box, in the chat box.
So, now on to today's program.
I mentioned it before, the
title is called, Foundations:
Analyzing Primary Sources
from the Library of Congress.
Today's program will be facilitated by two
excellent education specialists from the Library
of Congress; Mike Apfeldorf and Cheryl Lederle.
Today you'll learn and apply foundational
strategies for analyzing primary sources.
How can we facilitate learning activities that
help students become engaged, think critically,
and construct their own understandings?
It starts with making observations,
reflecting on them, and then asking questions.
Today you'll practice these
strategies and consider how
to apply them in your educational settings.
I am pleased now to turn the microphone
over to our first speaker, Cheryl Lederle.
>> Thank you, Kathy, and thanks to all
of you who are introducing yourselves,
we appreciate that you're here, we appreciate
that you've chosen to spend your time here.
As Kathy said, what we're going to do is
foundational to working with primary sources.
What you should see on screen in front of you
right now is the oldest and most famous building
of the Library of Congress, that's the Thomas
Jefferson Building, with its iconic green dome
and torch of knowledge on the top.
It's one of three Capitol Hill buildings
though, right behind it you see a fairly square,
blocky white building, that's the John
Adams Building, where Kathy and Mike
and I have our offices, when
it's safe to go in there.
I just like to show people where the library
is and invite you to come visit us sometime.
The physical library is beyond compare
and we'd like you to know that.
So, what I have in mind is an agenda of
together, we'll analyze primary sources.
This is not just me and Mike and Kathy
as talking heads, this event works well
because you bring yourselves to it and share
your thinking and your professional expertise.
And then we'll talk about ways to
develop instructional strategies
to help students examine
and analyze primary sources.
And given the current setting, I'm going
to guess that few of you have seen your--
>> Okay, we're having some technical issues with
Cheryl's microphones, so I'm going to go ahead
and ask Mike to go ahead and take over please.
Mike, are you there?
>> Yeah, I am here and I'm
unmuted, can you hear me?
>> Yeah, I sure can.
>> Okay, can I also advance the slides?
>> You cannot, but Cheryl may
be able to still hear you.
Cheryl, if you can hear him, go
ahead and advance the slides.
Okay, so we have had her
fallen off significantly.
So Mike, will you talk about what
you're doing with the program
and I will bring up today's slides.
>> Okay, well today, as Cheryl mentioned,
we're going to really go over some
of the foundational strategies that we,
[inaudible] use with teachers
for analyzing primary sources.
And I believe Cheryl is just really getting
to say is, we're going to do this sort
of collaboratively together, not just as us
talking with you but we're actually going
to do three different activities
together and as we do that,
we're going to analyze three different
primary sources and, along the way,
we're going to develop, talk
about instructional strategies
around the analysis of primary sources.
And thank you for your patience,
I know we're getting,
Kathy and Cheryl are getting
things back together.
>> I'm just waiting for my PowerPoint
to boot up here, so one second.
>> Okay.
Thanks everyone for your patience.
[inaudible] Kathy, how's it going?
There you go, we can just start here.
And what we want to do, and
Kathy, can you hear me again okay?
Can everyone hear me okay?
Can you give me some confirmation
in the chat if you all can hear me?
Okay, great.
So what we're going to do is three
separate activities that really get
into the analysis process in different ways and
we're going to go from kind of very introductory
and simple and scaffold it up to sort
of a more kind of robust analysis.
But for starters, we're going to, well we're
going to look at a series of photographs
from the Library of Congress; in
this one we're looking at a mosaic
of Minerva, from the Library of Congress.
And we're going to do an activity
called the 30 second look.
And what I want you to do is, this is
an activity to really just kind of work
on some basic observation skills and I want
to give you 30 seconds to really look hard
at this document and just kind of think
about observing all the things
you can in this document.
I'm going to go quiet for the next 30 seconds
and let you just observe
this as closely as possible.
I also sent out the link to this if you want to
get a closer look at the document, you can go
and look at, open that link if you want,
but just kind of make sure you keep
listening to me for when I bring you back.
So I'm going to go quiet for 30 seconds, and
just observe as many things as you can here.
Hey, Kathy, if you wouldn't mind just
going ahead and advancing the slide.
Okay, so now, you've had a chance to
look at it in detail and what I want you
to do is I want you to share as many details
as you can of what you noticed in the,
in your 30 seconds of looking, and what
I'm going to ask you to do is just try
to put all your observation down
at once and then hit return,
as opposed to just kind of
shooting them out one by one.
So take a couple minutes and try to
think of all the details you noticed
and then shoot them off to your colleagues.
I see comments coming in already from beautiful
sun, the enlightenment, that's interesting,
what makes you think of the
enlightenment, Jerry?
Somebody saw, Jerry also saw Latin writing
and perhaps that's the answer to that,
blue background, owl of wisdom in the
background, there's bright colors,
sun over the shoulder, lots of plants
and foliage, lots of good observations,
right scrolls, papyrus, sun and shield,
I want to know, there's also questions,
I want to know what she's reading.
Those of you who said that you thought the
owl was wisdom, what made you say that?
There's Minerva with a spear
related to her side, Athena,
so you can see how rich your observations are,
I'm seeing lots of brilliant colors, a person,
human, owl as a symbol of Athena, Nike of
Athens, a sword, lots of good comments here.
Let's go ahead and advance the
slide one more time, Kathy.
I'll just start saying the next slide.
Thanks. Just kind of a reflection as you're
looking at comments from your colleagues, what,
if anything, did your colleagues
notice that you didn't notice?
You want to share any of those
thoughts in the chat, please do.
Somebody overlooked the owl, that's interesting,
everybody is noticing different things,
the spear, the owl, lots of people
didn't see the owl at first,
other people were really focused on the owl.
Some people saw the Latin
writing right away, others didn't.
More questions, curious what's on the chest.
So we're all noticing very different things,
particularly at a very image rich with detail.
We can just scroll one more slide, please.
[inaudible] think what did you notice?
What did colleagues notice that you didn't?
And now that you look at this again,
after listening to your colleagues,
what new things are you noticing?
Feel free to share in the chat if
you're noticing more things now.
A ram on the helmet, boy, I
don't think I've ever seen that,
I never noticed that before, that's good.
The Medusa on the shield, vine work
around the edge, a spear, not a shaft.
So some, even some rethinking of details,
so sometimes a second look we get a
different perspective or different knowledge.
And more questions; where's that helmet
from, what's the background, Spartan?
Corinthian?
What is on her chest?
Lots of different kinds of plants.
Can we have the next slide, please?
Finally, think about this as an
activity you could do with your students,
this is really not necessarily our full-blown
analysis, but this is just, as it was stated,
a very quick engagement, a 30 second look.
So, think about, it was kind of fun looking at
the detail, but what kind of skills do you think
that your students could gain by
such an entry activity like this?
Feel free to share in the chat what skills
you think they might learn, observation,
description, and communication, right?
Collaboration, right, because we were bouncing
ideas off of one another, attention to detail,
factual versus inferences, right?
Because some people noticed an owl, some
people say that that owl is actually wisdom,
simplify as wisdom, that's an inference, right?
A little bit of background knowledge but
also inference, so there's kind of looking
at the observation, people were
talking about cultural experience
so you're bringing background knowledge, right?
A lot of folks could make judgments
about wisdom and things of that nature
because they have some background
knowledge of Athena, so primarily speaking,
this activity is really good for honing
observation skills but as you all mentioned,
some other things kind of are bubbling up as
we're doing this in terms of these observations,
you're also making inferences, and
you're asking questions, right?
And so as we move through our three sort
of primary source analysis activities,
you'll see how we'll in a more structured
way, get to all of those, right?
But this is just kind of a
starter, no answer is a bad answer
because what you see is valid, certainly, right?
And we're really focused on the
process of analysis here, right?
So, certainly an observation itself is
what you see, right, and you might sort
of help direct kids in terms of observations
versus inferences, but they're all good answers
at this point, as you say,
we want to engage kids.
So let's move on to the next slide.
We're going to be, just wanted to pause a
quick second here, and mention that everything
that we're going to talk about today has
to do with the analysis of primary sources,
also wanted to point out that all these sources
are going to be things that we've gotten
from the Library of Congress website,
I'm putting in the chat a link for,
well a link to learn more about how to get more
information about searching these collections.
We're really not going to get into search in
this particular webinar, we're really going
to focus on techniques for analysis.
In 2 weeks we're actually going to do another
activity on how to find resources at the Library
of Congress, so if you're interested
in that, feel free to click that link
and register for the next webinar.
Next slide, please.
Okay, so we've seen one very quick
activity called the 30 second look,
which is just very kind of quick, bang, bang,
bang, way to quickly observe a primary source
and sort of share with colleagues and relook at
it, really focused on this idea of observation.
Now we're going to do something that
continues those skills but maybe kind of builds
on those a little bit and I can see people are
getting their observations already interest
the chat.
I'm going to actually give you a little
different task this time, because we're going
to do a different little activity now
called the hide and seek activity.
And in this activity I'm going to ask you,
and you can see people are again pointing
out that they see a photograph of a
market in the Library of Congress,
and for this activity what I'm going to ask
you to do is, okay, a good that Cheryl's
in the audience, and if you can
get on, maybe Cheryl can get
on the phone as well if she likes.
So in this activity what we're going to
do is, I'm going to ask you to imagine
that you are hiding somewhere in this photograph
and as you are hiding in this photograph,
I want you to think about what clues you would
give your colleagues to find out where you are,
and if we could click through the slide one
more time, so this is going to be your sort
of charge, you want to imagine you're hiding
somewhere in the picture, and you want to think
about what clues could you leave to
tell somebody else where you are?
And think about using kind of
century rich language, right?
So I can imagine if I was at the
beach, I might say things like,
I can feel the sand squishing beneath my
toes, I hear a seagull directly over my head.
In this case, you want to think about
what are the clues right around you
and what clues could you give
your colleagues to find you?
So what I'm going to ask you to do
is do the same thing we did before,
get all your thoughts together and then put
them in one big chat sort of at the end.
So think of about two or three
clues and chat those together.
So, at this point you're
hiding somewhere in the picture
and you're going to leave
us clues where you are.
Let's try that.
Chantal says, there's a man standing
under the balcony, green rail,
clothes on a line under the balcony.
Andrew says, I'm not looking
into the camera, I'm a female
and I am turning around with a friend of mine.
Sydney says, near a wagon, next to a lamp post
underneath, if I hide somewhere in the corner,
sitting, I'm about to toss something,
I can hear two women talking.
So lots of different clues and
lots of varied clues, right?
I'm a child in a barrel, I have two men in
the hats they'll roll me away, oh my goodness.
Somebody's talking about smell
of fresh produce, okay, great.
Well let's go ahead and advance another
slide, so the idea in this activity is,
if we were in a classroom I might actually pair
you up in this activity with another student.
One student might be doing what you've just
been doing now, which is hiding in the picture
and leaving clues for the
other one to find, right?
And the second one then can then read those
clues and try to identify where the person is.
So, we're not going to have a chance
to pair up in this particular activity,
but I would invite you to scroll back
through other people's posts and just kind
of see what it would be like
to read somebody else's post
and see if you can then go and find that person.
>> Mike, this is Cheryl.
>> Oh great, you're back.
>> I'm back.
>> Wonderful.
>> I'm back.
And I've been skimming some of the
responses and there are so many good clues,
but let me read one that I think is clear
and might be fun to guess, if I may?
>> Okay.
>> Ashley says, there is a man standing
on a green balcony directly above me,
two men are riding by on the back of a wagon,
and clothes are drying in
front of me, where am I?
>> Okay, that was very nice, who did that one?
Did you say, who did you say?
>> Ashley.
>> Well done, Ashley, actually
well done everyone.
So, thank you Cheryl, for offering that.
Since we don't really have a chance to pair up,
I think it's worthwhile to maybe just kind of,
let's all do that one as one example.
So, Cheryl, if you wouldn't mind saying
it one more time, and people can look
at the picture again and try to put in the
chat, try to explain to me where this person is.
Would you mind reading that again, Cheryl?
>> I don't mind, I just need
a second to find it again.
I'm sorry, Mike, I had scrolled
on and I don't have it handy.
>> Well that's quite all right,
I remember several things;
like there's a man I was underneath what was a--
>> There's a man standing on a
green balcony directly above me--
>> Right, right.
>> There are two men on the
back of a horse drawn wagon--
>> Uh huh.
Oh, and I see--
>> And clothes are drying in front of me.
>> And I see some, the balcony man
is a great clue, somebody writes,
and somebody else wrote a great clue,
they said it's over by the lamp post,
and that's exactly right, so if you look
over toward the right of the screen,
you can see the clues were well given, there's
the, on the right hand side of the screen,
kind of the lower right hand side of the
screen, there's a horse carriage running by,
there's a man in a yellow, with
yellow sleeves above, looking down,
so the clues were the very descriptive clues
were given to show us where that person is.
Thank you very much.
So let's go on to the next slide, real quick.
Oh, thank you.
Annotation, that's pretty cool.
Thank you very much.
Let's go ahead and move to
the next slide if we can.
So what we want to think about is,
we've done two fairly quick activities
and we're really kind of building up to
our third activity which Cheryl's going
to take us through, which is really kind of our
main sort of primary source analysis strategy.
And these two activities along the way
are really kind of building toward that.
So one of the things that we want to
think about is, we talked a little about,
go ahead, you can go on to the next.
We talked about what kind of skills we used
in the 30 second look, a lot of you pointed
out that there was a lot of observation, but
I think we're already looking ahead to things
like inferences and questions
as well that you could,
we were surfacing some inferences
and questions along the way.
Thinking about this activity, this
hide and seek activity, what sort of,
what were some of the same
skills that were covered
and what, if any, new skills were covered.
And go ahead and feel free in the
chat, to mention anything on your mind.
Critical thinking, certainly, can feel free to
elaborate upon that, deduct them, certainly,
more with descript-- I mean [inaudible]
critical thinking than deduction,
maybe is showing this activity even more
than the first one, sort of asked kids
to infer a little bit, so if I,
you may say something like well,
where I'm sitting is very stinky, you know?
You're inferring maybe from some dirt or horse
manure nearby, that that was causing a smell.
So it starts to lead to this activity maybe
brings in inference a little bit more.
Also, Elizabeth points out,
more with descriptive words.
So this is a very language
rich activity, isn't it?
When we had to, you know, this is
not like hide and seek you want
to be hidden, you want to be found, right?
So the more successfully you communicate
where you are, the better you're doing, right?
So it really encourages very descriptive
language and communication, exactly.
Observation close reading, internal reflection
on senses, Sarah points out the senses,
it's multi-sensory, even though we're just
looking at a photograph, which is very visual,
we can ask kids to focus on
sensory language; what do they see?
What do they hear?
What do they feel?
And really that's kind of an inference too,
isn't it, you're inferring from visual clues,
what are some of the other sensory
ideas communication, certainly,
and description is a big part of this too,
listening, that's very good Stephanie,
because you know, if we were to do this in
classroom, we might do this verbally with pairs
of students and so one student may give
their clues and the other one really has
to be a close listener and see
exactly where that person is.
So thank you very much for
all these ideas and more.
If we could have the next slide, please.
If you like this activity, there is
the blog, and I'm going to go ahead
and put the link to the blog
in the chat as well.
And if you like this activity, I
encourage you to go to our blog
and there is a whole blog written on this one.
And it lays out a strategy, this hide and
seek strategy, and I should point out that
in this article, there's kind of two
strains that you can sort of focus kids on,
and we kind of mixed them in a way here, but
you may want to focus them one way or another.
You look at these two bullet
points in the middle of the page,
one of them is really focusing on asking kids to
do hide in a place, not necessarily be a person,
but hide in a place and give the
sensory feel of where they are
and you can see an example here
as, I fell the wet pavement
under my body, it's dark but I see shadows.
The other one has the second one
that we really didn't do is to choose
that you're a particular person and say
something from that perspective of that person,
so you can see the second bullet point it
says, I feel the weight of a baby as big as me,
I hear my friends goofing off, I put my face
in a serious expression for the photographer.
So we didn't really do that second one,
but it's worth noting what
additional skills might be developed
if you really take that second bullet point.
Any thoughts in the chat about
that before we leave this activity?
Putting yourself in the perspective of a
person, what might that add to the activity?
Certainly empathy, as Elizabeth
says, empathy, exactly.
What might that person with that big baby,
and I know the person they're talking about,
they're kind of close to the top, you'd
have to be more specific so again,
working that descriptive, think about the age of
the person, the actual viewpoint, so this idea,
as Elizabeth is saying, this idea, and Chantal,
this idea of point of view and perspective
which is also very important with primary
sources, to understand that you know,
if you are different characters in this
scene, you would see things very differently,
both physically and maybe both also emotionally.
So we know point of view is very important in
primary sources, there's also a point of view
of the photographer here too, right?
So we talk about point of view as authors of a
primary source, but there's also points of view
and perspective of different characters within.
So there's kind of different ways you can
layer different skills onto this activity.
I want to turn this over to Cheryl, which I'm
glad you were able to come back and join us,
to take us now to the next step here.
>> Thank you, Mike, and thanks
everybody for chiming in.
I see that I missed a rich discussion
but you guys certainly carried on.
So let's move on to the next slide as a bit of
a transition, I was just about to facilitate
with you what we call the 30 second look, and
Mike I'm sure stepped in, I was busy restarting.
But if you want to follow up on that, we
have an activity plan for that as well
that you can download, it's labeled as
being great for K-2 and it's certainly is,
but it could also be scaled to
other grade levels of course,
as you discussed in the conversation
about what skills you used.
As Mike said, what I'd like to do is deepen your
engagement with this, and model some approaches
that you might use with students and I'm
pretty excited that we're doing this online
because I suspect that's a setting that many of
you are suddenly finding yourself working in,
whether or not you expected that
back in August or September.
So, next slide please, Kathy.
I'd like you to take a close look at this
image and I'm going to ask you a small series
of questions, if we were face to face and had
a lot of time or I was teaching you content,
I'd ask you a large number
of questions, but for the,
to get the flavor of this,
we'll keep it to just a few.
So the first question, Kathy if you would
give it a click, is what do you notice first?
So I'm going to pause and draw breath,
Mike has put a jpeg in the chat,
if you want to take a closer look at
this, and the answers are coming in,
some of you are looking at the women,
at the box, at the shapes, Andrea,
I'd love to know why you say
you notice claustrophobia,
what do you see that makes you
say it gives you claustrophobia?
Ah, so closed in.
David is making a connection to Rosie
the Riveter, so some prior knowledge.
Mike asks a follow-up questions,
why do you say it was a space ship?
Andrew says, the fashion doesn't fit.
I'd love to know what you're
reacting to, Andrew.
Michelle says, it looks like the
World War II period and I'd again love
to know what details do you see in the picture
that make you think perhaps it's World War II.
It's fun to be thinking about
space ships, I haven't heard
yet if they think they'll go forward
with the NASA launch today or not,
last I looked, weather was a little dicey.
Michelle adds, the details of the
women's clothes and head scarves.
And Cindy chimes in with
clothing and hair styles.
Robert points out they're not uniformed
workers, which is strange for this kind of work.
Susan notes the words on the crate, Dept 40.
Melissa puts in submarine with a question
mark, so we have a couple of hypotheses,
that this is a submarine or that this is perhaps
an aircraft, so when you're faced with a couple
of different interpretations of
the evidence in front of you,
that's a good time to start
looking more closely.
Carolyn asks where is the light coming from?
Robert says, looks like aluminum
so it might be an aircraft.
Next slide please, Kathy.
The next question I'd like to layer in for you
is what do you think is happening in this image?
And some of you have begun that
with your responses already,
but I'd like to explicitly refocus you.
Elizabeth notes the drill in one girl's hand.
Assembling, machining, building an
airplane, driving rivets, telescope,
building the airplane, women are
working, possibly riveting the structure,
again going back to the Rosie the Riveter.
Jerry says, perhaps preparing
for usage in the war.
Elizabeth raises a new question,
could this be posed?
I would invite you to look for
some clues and cues for that.
What would suggest that maybe this is posed?
Sarah adds, civilian women
workers building a plane.
This is wonderful that the chat is
going faster than I can read it,
so if I've missed your response, it's
just because you guys are fabulous
in how many responses you're putting in.
Michelle adds that it could be
posed because it looks too clean.
Vanessa builds on that and
piggybacks very clean and no uniforms.
Also, Melissa adds, no safety gear.
Mark says, loose baggy clothing would
be dangerous in this environment.
Proximity and balance of photo.
Laura, this is just a primary source analysis,
we'll talk more about this activity for a bit,
we'll spend more time with this than
we did with the two warm-up activities.
Jackie says the lighting is odd.
The factory would be brighter
outside the windows.
And Sarah also is tuned in to the lighting, and
wonders if that indicates that this is posed.
And let's go on and layer in one
more question, if you want to,
if you haven't finished your thoughts
on what's happening or what you noticed,
feel free to continue that, but I'd
like to move to, what do you wonder?
And a couple of, I'm going to give you a
couple of prompts to shape your thinking
but don't feel overly constrained by my
questions, but if you're having trouble
like well what do I wonder, or if you're
thinking, how would I get students to wonder,
because as adult learners, we're very
curious and used to asking questions.
So, one prompt you might think about
is choose a person in the image,
what would you like to ask that person?
Or, what would you like to ask
the person who made this image?
What is department 403?
Where was this taken?
Why was this taken?
Is it promotional to encourage
other women to work as well?
Andrea wonders if these women like their
work as they all seem to be smiling.
[inaudible] mentions the
evolution of the industry.
Carolyn asks what are you selling?
Michelle adds, propaganda maybe?
Vanessa wonders if the photographer
is in the image.
Sydney asks, is the photo a form of
propaganda to get women in the workforce?
Andrew points out, why are they all white?
Allen adds, what country was this taken in?
Karen wants to see if their shoes
are more suitable than their clothes.
Elizabeth, I am not seeing a name badge
on the shirt, so I need to get back
when I get off this call with you all, I'm
going to need to go back and pull the file
up larger than I can see it on my screen.
Jackie wonders when the picture was taken.
Lots and lots of questions and some of
these are pretty easy to find answers to,
[inaudible] seeing the lady with the blue shirt.
I see one that you're looking at, yeah.
Eleanor says maybe this is the 1940s.
Liz wonders if this was the
U.S. or someplace else.
You guys are doing a terrific job of
really zooming around in the details.
Jessica wonders if the kneeling
woman is comfortable
because the structure seems to be ribbed.
And are they fixing something?
If you've dropped over to the image to zoom
around, I'd invite you to come back to read some
of these chat comments, there's a rich
and wonderful conversation going on that
and it seems like the more you ask
each other, the more you zoom in.
Carolyn says, can anyone see the pattern
on the kerchief the one woman is wearing?
A lot of curiosity about Department 403.
When we're in the office, we practice on each
other and get some input with a new image,
but since I'm at home, I had my husband do this
and he was fascinated by the font stenciled
on that box, he's into fonts
in a way that I am not.
Feel free to continue responding in
the chat if you like, I want to move on
and give you a little bit of context for this.
Again, onto the blog post, thank you.
Again, as Mike pointed out some resources
for the activities that he was facilitating,
and thank you Mike for putting this in
the chat, there's a blog post titled,
Core Strategies for Working with Primary
Sources: Primary Source Analysis.
One of the great things about
working with adult learners, you,
is we just kind of wind you
up and you go, right?
We give you an interesting object
and ask a couple of questions
and it's almost a perpetual motion
machine, you ask, you respond,
you respond to each other,
you interact with the object.
Your students may or may not come predisposed
to interact with primary sources that way
and so this blog post, and it links to a couple
of others, offers some strategies for teaching
with primary sources and
supporting student analysis.
So, I encourage you to explore that later.
I see some good research going on in
the chat, I look forward to having time
to dig into that after this program.
Next slide, please.
What I'd like to do in the next couple of
slides is model some ways to record responses,
there are lots of ways to get this going,
you did it in a straight line in a chat,
if we were physically together there are
some other tools and techniques we could use.
One that we use in live interactions is we use
tons of sticky notes, we print out documents,
print out images, and we invite people
by ones or twos or even larger groups,
to write their ideas on sticky notes and
so I tried to model that with a slide
and I'm pretty sure that if you're trying to
do this remotely, and had a shared document,
you could ask students to add their sticky
notes and do some collaborative interaction
and analysis synchronously or not even.
Next slide.
I'd like to show you, we have
a blog post for many things,
not for everything, but for many things.
There is a blog post that I wrote almost
8 years ago, about using sticky notes
to support observation in primary source
analysis, and Mike, when you get a minute,
if you would drop that in the chat box, that
would be fabulous, so people can get to that.
What I'd like to show you next though is a more
structured way of sorting student thinking.
This is a primary source analysis tool,
yeah, you guys are sharing lots of technology
in the chat and I encourage you to do
that, I am not allowed to do anything
that might be construed as a product endorsement
but I'm glad that you're sharing tools
and techniques that you have found useful.
This is a very simple three column tool,
observe, reflect, question, or some of you said
in the chat, oh, see, think, wonder.
We went with observe because we have materials
in many formats, some of which are not visual,
we have audio materials for example, but use the
language that works for your students and then
at the bottom there's a section
for further investigation.
So I want to explore what this might look like.
So on the next slide, you'll see, I
made a guess about some of the things
that you all would comment on and these are
the same notes that were on the yellow stickies
that were on a couple of slides ago, just
typed into this document which can be shared
with the teacher, so if you're working
remotely right now and trying to figure out how
to get student work, this can be emailed
to you and pretty straightforward.
You'll notice some lines between the columns,
because your responses weren't a straight line,
you didn't do all observations, and then
move to reflections and then ask questions,
although the prompts that I put in were really
structured to stimulate observations first
and then stimulate reflections, explicitly,
and then stimulate questions explicitly.
I'd invite you to put on your teacher hats
now for a minute with me and think back
about how I facilitated, I did some
intentional things that I want to just talk
through to make sure that in
the enjoying of the activity,
you walk away with this, with these ideas.
So, one of the things I did was I
invited you to build on your answers.
If somebody put in something, if somebody put
in a reflection without any kind of evidence,
I might have, if I saw it, I might have
invited you to add some detail to that,
I'd love to know more about your thinking.
What makes you say that?
For example, those are some of the
follow-up questions that I use all the time.
You'll notice in the upper right corner of
the analysis tool, there's a circle graphic
with arrows that say, thank you Kathy for
pointing that out with the cursor, observe,
reflect, question, and we included this graphic
because there's really not a single correct
starting point, there's not a correct order,
thinking does not naturally progress from
left to right, observe to reflect to question.
However, and I'm going to pause here after I ask
my question, because I've talked long enough,
what's the value of asking your students
to distinguish between an observation
and a reflection, and a question?
So I'm going to just mute myself for a
meant or two and invite you in the thought,
why would it be useful to you as a teacher
to have your students be able
to make these distinctions?
I see a lot of you circling around
critical thinking and I'd love
to know, have more than just a phrase.
How does being able to sort
your thoughts into observations
or reflections especially help students,
forces them to think about their thinking,
understand the different processes, a way to
make them aware of their own inquiry skills.
Yeah, great question, how do
you go from critical thinking
to applying knowledge and real world activities?
[inaudible] their own thoughts and
opinions versus being spoon-fed,
that is one of the great things
about working with primary source,
they raise more questions
than they do provide answers.
So, I see a lot of really deep,
thoughtful, responses and moving faster
than we can possibly process all of them
together, I encourage you when this is over,
to revisit the chat transcript
because there are a lot
of really powerful conversations going on there.
I'll tell you my background is once upon
a time I was a high school English teacher
and then I did another half dozen years
teaching community college writing,
a lot of argument writing.
And one of the most challenging things for me
was to get my students to support their thesis,
to support their hypothesis, and to
be able to say, well this is something
that most educated people would agree on, or
most people looking at this item would agree on,
those are the observations, and then
the reflections connect things together,
information together.
And then the questions are what
drive and loop learning, one of you,
a few of you talked about
inquiry and interaction.
So with that in mind, let's go on and layer in
some information; and here is the item record
that travels with the image, just to give
you more information, I cropped the image
out of the top of it but if you've worked online
or a lot of you have been looking at the urls
that Mike pushed, you know that just above the
horizontal line you would see the image itself,
so about the item, I'm going to read a bit
of it because if you're on a small screen,
this might be hard to see; women
workers install fixtures and assemblies
to a tail fuselage section of a B17F bomber
at the Douglas Aircraft Company,
Long Beach, California.
And it goes on, it is an airplane, and Mike has
put the url and a shortened version of the title
in the chat if you want to explore that.
I draw your attention if I may, to the creation
date, October of 1942, which as adult learners,
that helps you situate it in time.
Your students might need a
little research time to be,
to put it in context, well
what was going on in 1942.
The next piece of information, if you'd hit one
click please, Kathy, is, maybe one more click.
The next piece of information
I draw your attention to,
I think you just hit the slide, there we go.
Is it's part of, you'll see over
in the right column toward the top,
the Farm Security Administration/Office of
War Information Color Photographs Collection.
And if you click through that,
you can get to the collection
and read a little bit about the collection.
And one of the things you would learn
is that OWI pictures focus on factories
and women employees, railroads,
aviation training,
and other aspects of World War II mobilization.
I won't say that it is or wasn't
propaganda, but I will just leave that bit
from the collection description
with you to think about it.
Moving on, because we have 10 minutes left
and I have a few more conversations
that I'd like to start with you.
The next question I have is how will you decide
when to provide students with the item record?
For this one, I was pretty
careful to hold it back,
until we had done some conversation
and some close looking for it.
The link that Mike pushed out was disconnected
from the item record and
I did that intentionally.
Oh Hunter, that's a wonderful
personal connection.
Hunter writes, my grandfather
was an Army Air Corps Mechanic
in World War II and worked on B17s.
So again, the question is, how do you decide
when to provide students with the item record
and you might start with the
question of why did I hold that back?
Some of you are pointing out that it gives
learners time to think, anticipation,
allow for our guesses, affects observation,
having no information gave you so many things
to question, allows for more inquiry, get
as many questions generated as possible,
domino effect for changing and
building upon observations.
I have not heard that response, that
one catches my attention, thank you.
And I held back because the
conversation was flowing well.
No leads or item record creates
a wider range of connection.
Let's them engage, gives them an
opportunity to infer from personal experience
and observation before getting the full
information, I didn't want you to leave.
Well of course I didn't.
I'm glad you're all here.
But it builds some excitement,
I'll also say this,
don't think of the item record
as the answer key.
Just between us, since we're friends here,
the item records are created by humans based
on the information that they have available
and these things do not come neatly packaged.
Lots of them come with little or no information,
it's a lot more like Grandma's attic than it is,
you know, things coming in
neat rows and packages.
Mark points out that it's like
asking for an answer to a riddle.
Elizabeth's response is a hunger to find out.
So yeah, as soon as you read the item
record, you've put the item in a box
and you interaction with it is very different.
Let's keep moving.
So here's one of the tools
that I use when I'm preparing,
there's along with the primary source analysis
tool, there's a set of teacher's guides
like the one that's in front of you.
This one is specific to analyzing
photographs and prints,
because we were analyzing a photograph, but
there available for many different formats
of items; maps, political curtains,
newspapers, audio files, and so forth.
And what I typically do is highlight a few
questions that will move my learner group
in the direction that I want them to go.
Again, because I work with adults
and if I choose my prompt well,
I can't stop you guys from interacting.
And so I didn't need to ask a lot of
questions, but just asking a few things.
Toward the bottom of this, you'll see
the further investigation section is
to help students identify questions
appropriate for further investigation,
and to develop a research
strategy for finding answers.
So, the item stimulates the inquiry into
learning more and then at the very bottom
of this, in print so small you
probably can't read it on your screen,
there are some follow-up activity
ideas that Kathy is highlighting
with the cursor, to engage
learners even further.
Next slide when you get a moment, Kathy.
So I just want to highlight the farther
investigation and then we'll keep moving on.
And in the interest of time, I'm just going to
introduce the question of how I would shape this
if we were actually doing an
investigation what I would ask you to do is,
can I have the words back
when you get a minute Kathy?
Is I'd put you probably in pairs or
maybe ask you to do this by yourself,
it depends on what would give you the
most support, and ask you to select one
or two significant questions generated
by the analysis, it might be something
in the question column, it might be something
that you've thought of since you got access
to the item record, there are lots of
ways that you could generate a question.
And then to think about, okay,
how would you shape that question?
How would you develop it so that
it's productive for further research?
And where would you look for more information
to slow this down and give students some time
to think about it before they
dive in and go on to research?
In the interest of time, we're not going to
actually do this but that's how I would do it
if I were teaching you in a class.
So, next slide please.
This is I think the most important part of our
webinar time together and that is when you share
and we've done quite a bit of reflecting on
practice along the way, but just to tie this
in a neat and tidy bow, how
can you apply these strategies
in your face to face or remote instruction?
Either an idea that you gained today,
or something that you have done
effectively for a while, either way works.
Melissa would use these as
a closure activity idea,
and Brenda says this would be a great opener
for online groups of middle schoolers.
And I have talked with teachers who used
it at all points in a lesson and it works,
it can open a lesson, it can close or review a
lesson, there are lots of ways to bring this in.
David suggest writing fiction ideas, [inaudible]
writing prompt, warming up Kindergarten brains,
Ashley, there's a, we in the blog, search for
the young learners section, you'll love it.
[inaudible] says, we used to do the 30
second looks for U.S. History classes.
Fun, fun, I'm going to keep moving
because we're almost out of time,
but you should keep adding your responses
to this and the final slide that we have
after this contact information,
invites you please, if you would,
to give us some survey feedback, we're at the
fairly near the front of a summer of webinars
and we value your input, what worked, what
were you hoping for, and then and Kathy
or Mike will paste that survey link in for you.
And then also, if you would like a certificate
for being here today, please, please, please,
you may email my colleague, Kathy,
who has been behind the scenes today,
who introduced us, kmcg@loc.gov.
Yeah, Melissa, I was a high
school English teacher
and I think the 30 second look would absolutely
introduce a novel to set up the time period,
so again, I thank you for your
time, we have a couple of minutes
if you had a question that
didn't get the answer.
Please do ask it in the chat.
Please do give us your input, I
promise the survey is very short.
And I thank you again for your
lively and engaged participation.
Kathy, maybe you could go back a slide,
somebody's looking for the Ask a Librarian.
If you're looking for a certificate, be sure and
email Kathy, kmcg@loc.gov, she will not be able
to collect your information from this chat so
I'm glad that so many of you are interested
in the survey, and Mike has posted all of
these links, thank you so much, into the chat.
Kathy, will the copy of the chat
be posted with session materials?
>> I sure hope-- yeah, that's a great question.
I sure hope so, we do save the chats and
we have to do a little bit of cleaning up,
but we hope to post that along with
the pdf of Cheryl and Mike's slides.
So, I do encourage you if you want a certificate
to email me at kmcg@loc.gov, I'm going to bring
up that slide now and it's not attempted so
give me your first name and your last name
and we will get those certificates
out to you within the week.
The recording of this webinar will go up
as soon as we are able to get it posted,
we have to caption this, so we will
make sure that we get that out to you.
I can, you know what I can do, I will sent out
a follow-up email to all the attendees today,
with the chat, so that you guys have a copy
of the chat, it'll be a rather wordy document,
but you'll be able to get to the
urls, so I will go ahead and make sure
that that happens by the end of this week.
Thank you everyone for such an
amazing interactive session today,
this is the first of our Foundations series,
it's a program that we are running this summer,
for every other Wednesday we are doing these
foundational programs which really focuses
on different strategies you can use
and working with primary sources.
I'm going to ask Mike to send you the,
put in the url for the webinar series,
so every other Wednesday we're doing
these foundational programs and then
on the other Wednesdays, we
are doing programs that talk
about different ways you can dive deeper into
different strategies, the foundations really are
for those who are learning to use primary
sources or are looking for new techniques
in using primary sources, and the other seminars
that we have this summer are going deeper
into very specific ways of
using primary sources.
So we do hope that you'll join us
every Wednesday at 2:00 eastern time,
we have a great summer lineup and we
have programs going through August 5th,
they are free to attend and for live
participation we can offer a certificate
of completion.
So we do thank you today, I thank our
presenters, and I thank you all for hanging
in there with the technology, it's
been a day, so without further delay,
that ends our program today and
we hope to see you again soon.