>> Hello, good afternoon everyone.
My name is Kathy McGuigan
from the Library of Congress.
Welcome to today's episode
of online office hours.
Our focus today is on primary
sources for the science classroom.
And we're so glad that you can join us if you're
joining us live or even if you're joining us
by recording after the after the date.
So these informal sessions are shorts,
there'll be about a 20 minute demonstration.
And as I mentioned before the
sessions are being recorded.
You'll have the opportunity to talk with
each other and to the presenters via chat.
So let's get started with using chat.
Tell us your name, where you're joining
us from and what and whom you teach.
Mentioned earlier, today's episode is
primary sources for the science classroom.
Think I mentioned that.
So today you'll learn about teaching science
and technology using the
library's robust collections.
You'll hear from the library's Albert
Einstein teaching fellow Amara Alexander
about her experiences in creating
teaching resources using the Library
of Congress primary sources.
Joining her and starting the
program off is Danna Bell
from the learning and innovation office.
On chat today, we have Cheryl Lederly [assumed
spelling] answering your questions via chat.
So feel free to text in your questions
as our presenters are speaking.
And I'm going to hand the mic over to Danna.
>> Hello and welcome to today's and there we go.
We're really glad that you're here
and that you're joining us today.
And we're going to start off with Amara talking
about using some of the resources that are here
at the Library in developing her materials
and how she located those resources.
Amara, let's get started.
>> Hello, Danna, thank you so much.
I am super thrilled that everyone has come
to join us for our online office hours.
I see a lot of my friends from Wood Morris.
Well, thank you all for joining us today.
As stated, I am Amara Alexander, a K-5
student teacher out of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
currently serving as the Albert
Einstein distinguished educator,
fellow at the Library of Congress.
For today's session, I will highlight how
to locate science resources that you can use
within your classroom instruction
and for distance learning.
Let's get started.
As you can see on our home screen when you
type in llc.gov, you'll arrive at our homepage.
The carousel in the middle, it often
update periodically based on the exhibit
and new content that will be
at the Law Library of Congress.
However, the subtitles as you can see
Library Catalog, digital collections,
researchers, those all remain the same.
To access the resources, the resources
for educators, click teachers.
Danna [inaudible] like the teachers.
>> Yup, I did.
>> Okay. Now you can move on to the next slide.
It doesn't show when -- it doesn't
show what I'm talking about.
>> Okay, we're on the teacher's homepage.
>> Okay.
>> I don't see [inaudible] teachers.
>> Okay, great, because I don't see them.
But, I'll keep talking.
So you just let me know.
Look, we have a teacher page.
is a hub for everything teacher,
it is my new best friend.
I love this.
So from professional development, lesson plans,
primary source sets, my personal favorite.
It's a blog.
Resources are provided for all
levels of teachers, K12 to higher ed.
Items are curated for teachers, by
teachers and there's a lot to explore.
So let's go to my favorite first, the blog.
You're going to click on the highlighted area.
Okay, it's toward the middle of the screen.
All right, so are we on the blog, Danna?
>> We're on the blog page.
>> Okay, awesome.
Here you will find on the
blog has a variety of topics
like they're written for teachers, by teachers.
So when you look on the blog, you shall see
the most current blog posts that we have.
And if you notice on the left hand side of the
categories, we have all types of categories
from maps to geography to
culture and folk lives.
It's all here for educators to select from.
The topics are listed alphabetically.
And when you scroll down below to the bottom
to the [inaudible], you will find the blogs
of science, technology, engineering
and mathematics.
We're good.
Okay, you have that.
Okay. So once you select that,
you will see all of those items.
I use the blog.
It is my first resource for finding
primary sources as it relates to science.
If I want to quick weapon, I can scan the blog.
There I have found a lot of lessons that
I can quickly adapt for my young scholars
and since my Wood Morris family is here,
I definitely when I went back in February,
did some lessons with the fifth grade and our
fourth grade teacher did some lessons as well.
So the blog has a wealth of resources.
When you are trying to locate
some items for your classroom,
definitely check out the blog first.
There are blogs written by teachers and
the educational staff that you can use.
So I'm going to highlight one of
the blogs that I wrote with another,
co-wrote with another Einstein fellow.
There we focused, we demonstrated
how to use rollercoasters
to teach potential and kinetic energy.
And notice that we use primary
sources to anchor the lessons.
We challenged students to observe the design
of the roller coaster and identify points
of gravitational potential
energy and kinetic energy.
And towards the end of the lesson, we invited
students to create their own roller coaster,
as well as their amusement, own amusement park
if some time was allowed
in your class instruction.
I really encourage everyone to browse the
blog and locate a lesson that you can model
within your students during
this distance learning.
I know tomorrow is Earth Day, and a blog
will go out about Earth Day if you would
like to incorporate that into
your classroom instruction.
Are there any questions?
>> Amara, the Earth Day blog is out today.
So if you want to see another blog that
Amara wrote, it is available on the
on the library's blog page on
the teachers page blog page.
>> Awesome.
That's awesome.
Great. Danna.
Are there any questions about how to
get to the blog and navigate the blog?
Questions?
>> You can feel free to text
your questions into the chat box.
>> Okay. Awesome.
All right.
So let's go back to the homepage.
So that was the blog [inaudible] page.
We're on the homepage.
Okay.
>> Yep.
>> So that's the home page.
So I'd say there's a lot of things that
you can choose for on the teacher site.
Another one of my favorites
would be the primary sources.
So we're going to click on classroom materials.
>> Done, done.
>> And then we are -- now I'm
at the classroom materials.
You notice we have primary sources, lesson
plans, presentations and activities.
After today's session, if you want to
go through and look at some more things,
definitely take an opportunity to
look at the classroom materials.
But for today I'm going to highlight one of
the library's most popular educator resources
and that being the primary source set.
So we're going to click on
the primary source set.
>> We have done that and we are moving to the
-- we are moving to the list of primary sets.
>>Okay, thank you, Danna.
If you're like me, I like things already
ready, curated to go in the classroom next day,
the primary source sets do offer that.
So thinking about as a science teacher,
some lenses of some primary source sets
that we already have curated, the dustbowl
in which you could talk about weathering
and erosion with your students and
using those historical documents
to really gather some conversation.
If you're thinking about
the solar system or space,
there is a primary source set
entitled understanding the cosmos,
as well as for your K2 classrooms,
you're could think about weather.
You could do weather forecasting
the primary, the primary source set.
And my personal favorite, I love
aviation, and I think it has a lot of STEM
and historical connections to it,
that being the Wright brothers.
So let's look at the Wright
Brothers primary source set.
>> And we are.
>> Okay. So when you come to a primary
source set, each set has a teacher guide,
a primary analysis tool, and the
standards if you're interested
in those for your particular state.
There is a direct link for the
primary source as well as a PDF.
So when you click on the PDF, you
can just print it out, run copies,
or if you're doing distance
learning, you can attach it to one
of those documents for your students to see.
Everything is provided for you.
Like I said, the Wright brothers, they're
my personal favorite, but please take time
to explore other primary
source sets that you could use
into your classroom beyond science if need be.
So there -- are there any questions
about the primary source sets?
Okay, I don't see any generated.
All right, so I've gone over the blog, which
I like, as well as the primary source sets.
So let's go back to the homepage.
Let's say there's not anything from
the blog that you're looking --
that you're looking for,
and you don't really see.
There's a topic of a primary source set
and you know, it's some good information,
but you want to dive a little bit deeper.
Let's go back to the homepage.
And at the top, there's going
to be a search engine.
I'm assuming we're there, right Danna.
>> We are.
>> Okay. So just as a caution, the
search engine is not like Google,
it does not think like Google and it often
has its own language and Danna can go more
into that because that is her thing.
So I'm going to kind of walk you
through what I did for Earth Day
because I knew Earth Day was coming up.
And I wanted to highlight a
primary source set in a, excuse me,
a primary source, in a blog on Earth Day.
So when I began my Google search, I typed in
recycled and if you're looking at recycle,
a couple of things were generated
and if you're ever doing a search --
>> I'm here.
>> There we go.
All right.
Okay. If you are ever doing a
search, certain items will generate.
If you're looking at the left of the screen,
it's going to tell you the how many
items are curated within your search.
I like to look at the prints and photographs.
However, you might be interested
depending on what you're doing manuscripts.
You might want to dive into newspapers across
America, as well as maybe you're interested
in the legislation on particular items.
So here, I was able to generate some posters.
But I really wanted to locate an image
of children that were doing recycling.
So I kind of thought about it for a little
minute, I wasn't getting what I really wanted.
I began to search with the word scrap
drives after talking with a colleague,
and so I was then able to have a some other
items generated in that particular search.
And I was able to locate a picture or an image
that featured children that
were doing some recycling.
So if we're looking at the, the page that
has the scrap drives, notice the difference
between the items that were
generated when I did recycle
versus what was generated
when I did scrap drives.
So when you're doing your search
for your science classroom,
you might have to think creativity creatively
enable to generate which you would like to.
Sometimes you're going to have to play
around with it a little bit until you're able
to find what you really would like.
So there's the image of the
students that are recycling
and if you were using our primary analysis
tool, you can invite your students to observe,
reflect and question what
was going on at that time?
What were the students doing?
Why were they recycling?
You might even want to bring up the word
of scrap drives and relate that back
to site recycling for your Earth Day lesson.
So when you have the primary source,
all documents will then have
a little more information
about that particular source
that the about the item.
It has the title when it was created,
and other places that you probably
locate similar primary resources
to the search that you were initially doing.
Are there any questions?
Okay. So over me being a K5 STEM teacher,
this is some of the tricks and tools
that I've learned here at the
Library of Congress using their blog,
the primary source sets as well as how to search
items for my science [inaudible] classroom.
If you're really interested in what you heard
today, I invite you to join us tomorrow, again.
A colleague, Mike and I,
will be hosting a webinar
and connecting science and civics together.
And that will be tomorrow at 4pm.
And if you would like to register for that,
please go back to our teacher homepage and click
on the highlighted area and
you can sign up for that.
All right.
Danna, it's on you.
>> Okay, Amara has spent a lot of time
talking to you about the materials
that are available on the teachers page.
But I wanted to spend a minute
talking about some of those resources
that are from the science Reading Room.
And we are fortunate to have Michelle
Cadera [assumed spelling] Bradley
from the science Reading Room,
monitoring our chat today.
And if you have additional
questions that I can't answer,
I will definitely be forwarding them to them.
The science reading room has a
variety of different resources.
And I'm going to point out a few of them to you.
The blog for the science, technology and
business Reading Room, business and science
and technology share a reading room together.
And this one was this particular blog post
was written by Michelle and it's talking
about Orville and Wilbur Wright and leads
you to other resources that you might use
to find additional information
on the Wright Brothers
that are available at the Library of Congress.
Another resource which is a personal favorite
of mine is called Everyday Mysteries.
And it's monitored by the staff from the science
technology, science and technology Reading Room.
And it's used they use questions that come in
through the library's Ask a Librarian service.
So this particular question is, how can you tell
the difference between a butterfly and a moth?
And I'm going to see if I
can go live with this one.
Okay. All righty.
>> There you go.
You're actually live on the site now.
>>Okay.
>> Yep.
>> Never a dull moment.
When it comes to technology,
I always have adventures.
So now we're on the web.
>> Okay, this is Kathy from
the Library of Congress.
We're still having some technical issues.
Danna we can no longer hear you.
>> Okay.
>> There we go.
Now I got you back.
All right, perfect.
>> I turned myself down because
the echo was pretty spectacular.
But you can see some of the images and related
websites and if you want to find books,
books that might be useful, plus a link
to the Ask a Science Librarian page.
Can you see the PowerPoint now?
>> No. I need you to go back up to
share and select select the application
and select the PowerPoint, please.
>> Danna, I think we're actually on it now.
Go ahead and head down.
>> Yep. I think we're good.
Yes. Okay.
In addition to things like everyday mysteries,
the science reference staff have created web
guides and other resources that you can use
to look for information that relates to
resources for teachers, including biographies,
women's science, Latinos and math and science,
other resources for teachers, schools,
informational school gardens and so on.
>> Cheryl, I just I'm going to interrupt
for a second, Danna, because Michelle put
into the chat just a really interesting fun
fact, that is a little bit time specific.
And she says that that page you are just
showing grew from a question from a gardener,
who said they kept seeing these strange
things hovering over their flowers
in the evening, and asked what they might be.
So thank you for letting me interrupt.
I love sharing these behind the scenes
tidbits about how things came to be.
>> Yeah. And I've heard some, I've
heard some really fun questions
that have come out of the everyday mysteries.
My personal favorite is still how
high can a nine banded armadillo jump?
So the science technology and
business division is very active
in getting speakers to come to the library.
And they record almost all of the materials
and the presentations that they do.
And you can find these on the webcast page.
This one is on the Apollo moon launch
and the exploration the lasting effect
of exploration on the lunar surface.
And you can go through these, view them.
They're available for your use at your leisure.
And then the, the staff from the science and
technology reading group also does a number
of web guides and you can access them on this
page and you're getting the links from Cheryl
and you can go in and they will lead you to
a variety of different resources, both online
and offline that will make you -- will help
you to bring these materials to your students.
Last, but certainly not least,
is the Ask a Librarian page.
So if you have a question after the
session, and you need additional assistance,
you can go to Ask a Librarian and you can
access that from the little the three lines
on the right side next to the search box.
And then, if you want to get to Michelle and
her colleagues, go to science and technology.
If you want to reach me in terms of
Teacher Resources, go to Teacher Resources.
And that's my part of the presentation.
If you have questions, you can put
them in the chat box and either Amara
or Michelle or I will try to answer them.
>> Thank you, Deanna.
And thank you, Amara.
Just a reminder that you can feel
free to send in your questions.
We have Danna Bell, who is the teacher
resources, Ask a Librarian and we have Michelle
from the science and technology
reading room and Ask a Librarian.
So feel free to send in any
questions that you may have.
We also have with us, Amara Alexander, who is
a K, is an elementary STEM teacher and she is
with the with us on staff at the Library
of Congress for this school year as part
of the Einstein fellow program,
so if you have any questions
about that, you may send in those questions.
And as those questions are coming
in, I just want to remind you
that we do have a one hour webinar tomorrow on
science resources, and I know people have put
in the link to it, I am going to go ahead
and send you the link directly to register.
You have to register for
this event, but you can do
so through the URL that I just said out there.
So we will stay on the line and answer
any questions that you may have.
So please feel free to text them in the chat.
>> And just a reminder that
that webinar is absolutely free.
It's open to you to you to join Amara and Mike
Appledorf, who is another member of the learning
and innovation team, and it's going
to be a wonderful presentation.
>> Thanks, Shauna, I think you'll
get a lot, you'll get a lot more
out of tomorrow's session as well.
And as a reminder, we do record our events.
And we try to get those posted to
our site as quickly as possible.
So if you're not able to join
us anytime for a live session,
you can do so, yeah, that's a pretty long URL.
>> I was going to add to the person who
asked about foreign language collections.
If you want to make some people in
the Hispanic division really happy,
they have some wonderful collections.
Yes, they are not available online for the
most part, but they can certainly lead you
to resources and give you
some ideas that you might want
to use using Spanish language materials.
And you can access them through
the Ask a Librarian service.
As I mentioned, earlier in the
program, we are Hear every Tuesday
and Thursday for online office hours.
And on Thursday, we have a
special session on transcription,
crowdsourcing from the Library of Congress.
It's about the library's transcription projects
and you can learn about virtual volunteering
and transcribing documents
from the library's collection.
Next week's program, we'll
have a session next Tuesday
on touring the Jefferson Building from home.
The Jefferson Building is the iconic
building of the Library of Congress.
And we'll have Ahuru Fleming from
our staff and a docent with a library
of congress giving us a tour
of the Jefferson Building
and next Thursday we'll be celebrating Law
Day and Law Day is on May 1, and our teacher
and residents Jen Rydell will be with
us to talk about how she uses law
and law cases in in her classroom.
So we do hope that you will join
us for those events as well.
If you have any questions, go
ahead and send them in via chat.
Otherwise, if you don't have any
questions, this will conclude our program.
I will let you know that we will have a special
announcement coming very shortly about a spring
and summer professional development
webinar series that we have in the works.
As we mentioned, we have a program
tomorrow on science resources and two weeks,
we'll start a another webinar series and will
be our first episode will be on the front
with the right question Institute
looking at the question formula technique
and working with primary sources.
So more information will be forthcoming
on the professional design webinar series.
Those events, if you participate in the live
events, they are happening every other Wednesday
at 2pm, you can receive a
certificate for your time with us.
They are free.
And we will certify for the live
participation, one hour for your CPUs
or your PDUs whatever you're state accepts.
Okay, we'll stay on to see if there are any
questions within the next minute or two.
If there are none, we will conclude the program
but we do thank you for joining
us this afternoon.
We know that there are an incredible
amount of demands being put upon your time,
so we appreciate the time that you've spent with
us, and I just want to say a special thank you
to Amara for planning a great trip around
the teachers page and showing us some
of what she has been able
to use in her instruction.
Danna, thank you also, for showing us some
more of the science resources and Michelle,
thank you for joining us and chiming in with
some great fun facts and other resources.
And a nice tip came in from B Hauser on just a
tip for teachers having trouble finding items,
check with your campus librarian
to brainstorm search terms.
Very good.
Yes, that's a great tip.
And the other thing that I want to point
out is in these office hours, we've had two,
two sessions, one was called
the Library of Congress 101,
which was a how to get access
to primary sources quickly.
And then we had a Library of Congress 201,
which was taking a deeper look at some
of those search terms and how you can use
the library's pages, bibliography pages,
to be able to find some of those search terms.
So definitely check on to
the online office hours page.
And I'll just bring that up real quick,
where those recordings are available.
And Cheryl beat me to it, of course.
All right.
Well, thank you all.
And we hope to see you on
Thursday for our program
on crowdsourcing from the Library of Congress.
Thank you and have a great day.