By BERNICE TELL
In the not-too-distant past, schoolchildren learned their lessons from their teachers and textbooks. (Aside from an occasional movie or television program, technology played little part.) Today, however, a growing number of students and teachers are gaining access to the Internet - and a new tool for learning.
This revolution was apparent at the 76th Annual Conference of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) - with its theme "Empowering Young Citizens: Issues and Challenges." Held Nov. 22-25 in Washington, the conference attracted more than 5,000 social studies educators worldwide. They came to attend innumerable workshops, visit more than 500 exhibitors' booths and discuss the latest teaching innovations.
Past NCSS exhibitions had focused on textbooks and magazine publisher displays. This year's convention included exhibitors' booths with catalogs and brochures describing CD-ROMs, videos, video cassettes and other electronic resources designed to enhance education.
For the first time, the Library was also represented at the NCSS, promoting its World Wide Web offerings, including American Memory digitized historical collections and the Learning Page for teachers and students. The National Digital Library Program's Martha Dexter, project manager, and Lisa Alexander, educational resources specialist, supervised the Library's program for NCSS. Under their direction, the Library had its own exhibition booth and presented a workshop explaining its online American history resources. In addition, educational publishers Macmillan/McGraw- Hill and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill co-sponsored with the Library a reception at the Great Hall in the Jefferson Building for more than 200 key educators attending the conference.
More than 4,000 people visited the Library's exhibition booth to talk with representatives and view scheduled online demonstrations in the exhibit booth. Although the Library's conference-wide workshop was held early Sunday morning, the room was filled to overflowing with social studies teachers and curriculum specialists eager to learn more about the Library. Using a large-screen monitor, Ms. Dexter demonstrated the Library's online initiatives, including American Memory, which offers access to primary source materials of American history from the Library's collections; the online "card" catalog; THOMAS, a legislative database; and the online exhibitions.
Ms. Alexander explained how the Library had found user-friendly ways to deliver primary sources to its new audience, K-12 students and teachers, through the Learning Page, accessible from the main home page at http://www.loc.gov/.
Using the Learning Page (online since March), Ms. Alexander demonstrated the four options for users. She explained that the "Search Guides" option leads to "pathfinder" indexes, which guide teachers and students through American Memory collections and other Library of Congress resources. The next option, "Learn More About It," provides education-oriented examples, search words and resources for each collection, including "Read More About It" reading lists. This option also contains "Feature Presentations" that tie American Memory collections to current events and the school calendar. The third option is "Activities," which presents individual projects for students. The final option, "Educator's Page," offers classroom lesson ideas for using American Memory and other professional resources.
Ms. Alexander urged her audience to try these newly available primary resources for themselves to enhance their teaching lessons.
"I can't wait to get back and use this," a teacher from Arkansas said. A social studies specialist from Texas added, "You've really given me something to work with."
Said another teacher: "The K-12 community is hungry for these materials and is most appreciative of this effort by the Library of Congress. It's nice to see my tax dollars at work."
Bernice Tell is a Washington free-lance writer.