Using Digital Public Library of America for Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning – Wednesday, October 21, 2015

The American Association of School Librarians is hosting a complimentary live webinar on Wednesday, October 21, 7:00 PM EST. The webinar, Using Digital Public Library of American for Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning, will be targeted to school library professionals, and those interested in the topic.

Registration information for the workshop is available at http://www.ala.org/aasl/ecollab/dpla .

In this session, presenters Franky Abbott and Trish Vlastnik will introduce participants to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The presentation will include an overview of the site’s useful features for teachers and students doing research, such as maps, timeline, and online exhibitions. Presenters will also demonstrate sample keyword searches to illustrate how participants can find materials on the site most quickly and easily and incorporate them into lesson plans in ways that support inquiry. Finally, the presenters will share specific education initiatives, such as primary source sets for students, currently in development at DPLA.

Program Learning Objective 1:
Participants will understand the history, mission and goals of the Digital Public Library of America and explore the Digital Public of America website through a guided tour illustrating the wealth and breadth of digital resources present in DPLA repositories.

Program Learning Objective 2:
Participants will learn how to use critical, modern digital library technologies, including basic search techniques, faceted browsing (scanning digital collections by elements such as item type and year of creation), map-based exploration, and the use of digital timelines to discover and assess primary sources in the specific context of DPLA.

Program Learning Objective 3:
Participants will understand how to incorporate DPLA resources into lesson plans and to utilize these digital assets in a manner that supports inquiry-based teaching and learning and develops higher order thinking skills by asking students to analyze an image, text, or other item related to a particular subject.

Trish Vlastnik has served students and teachers in both private and public school libraries over the past sixteen years; first as media secretary, then as media specialist.  She has spent the past ten years in Jonesboro, Georgia working as a media specialist in the Clayton County Public School District at the elementary and secondary levels. In 2014, she assumed her current position as the Media Specialist at the new Martha Ellen Stilwell School of the Arts. Ms. Vlastnik has spoken extensively on the subject of incorporating digital resources in instruction as a means to support inquiry-based teaching and learning.

Franky Abbott manages education initiatives at the Digital Public Library of America. She has broad experience working on a variety of digital projects for public engagement and higher education, standards and assessment development for K-12 education, and as an English teacher in grades 10-12.

Share

Two new online exhibits created by partners from DLG, DPLA, and Georgia’s public libraries

Photograph of children's dog show, Manchester, Georgia, 1953. Pine Mountain Regional Library, Manchester, Georgia.
Photograph of children’s dog show, Manchester, Georgia, 1953. This photograph is from a scrapbook submitted to Georgia Power’s 1953 Champion Home Town contest. Pine Mountain Regional Library, Manchester, Georgia.

The Digital Library of Georgia is pleased to announce two brand-new online exhibitions on the subjects of children in Progressive-era America, and Georgia’s home front during World War II that are now available through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). These exhibitions were created as part of the DPLA’s Public Library Partnerships Project (PLPP) by collaborators from the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), DPLA, and Georgia’s public libraries.

Children in Progressive-Era America, available at

http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/children-progressive-era

In twenty-first century American society, childhood is popularly understood as a time of innocence, learning, and play. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, children made up part of the country’s workforce, and labored on farms and in factories. Reformers during the Progressive Era—a period of social activism and political reform across the United States between the 1890s and 1920s—took a great interest in child welfare. Through organizations and legislation, they sought to define what a happy and healthy childhood should be in the modern age. The formula for a healthy childhood was further refined in postwar America.

Central themes in the exhibit include: work life, reform, public health, play, children’s organizations, and childhood in postwar America.

 

Photograph of a banquet, Perry, Georgia, 1945. Photograph shows a dinner held when General Courtney Hodges visited Perry, Georgia, in 1945. Houston County Public Library, Perry, Georgia.
Photograph of a banquet, Perry, Georgia, 1945. Photograph shows a dinner held when General Courtney Hodges visited Perry, Georgia, in 1945. Houston County Public Library, Perry, Georgia.

Georgia’s Home Front: World War II, available at

http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/home-front-world-war-ii

Three years before the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt declared the South to be “the nation’s number one economic problem.” Georgia’s economy was distinctly agricultural and low-wage, with little manufacturing compared with states in the North and Midwest. One year later, an influx of federal defense money established new wartime industries. Military training was widespread throughout Georgia, and World War II employment was crucial to the economic development of the state, ushering in the transformation to a modern, industrial, and diverse Georgia.

The exhibit covers key themes that include: military activities, soldiers and families, women’s involvement in the war, civilian war efforts, and homecoming after the war’s end.

PLPP, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is a project that connects existing DPLA service hubs (state, regional, or other collaborations that host, aggregate, or otherwise bring together digital objects from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions) with public librarians. The DLG became one of the first six service hubs for DPLA in 2013. Since then, the DLG has worked with public libraries statewide who have special collections and want to share their content with a broader audience, but may not have the resources to do so. Through PLPP, the DLG has provided digital skills training for Georgia public librarians, and has connected them with sustainable state and regional resources for digitizing, describing, and exhibiting their cultural heritage content online. Much of the training, digitization, and description of public library materials has taken place over the past year; items curated from this now-digitized public library content provide visual context for these two exhibits. “These new themed virtual exhibits, hosted by DPLA, provide a way to globally showcase the important historical materials held by public libraries in Georgia,” said Sheila McAlister, director of the DLG.

Cynthia Kilby, director of the Pine Mountain Regional Library System, which serves Meriwether, Upson, Talbot, and Taylor Counties in Georgia, appreciates the opportunities that PLPP has provided in creating access to her collections. Materials from Pine Mountain Regional Library’s collections are available in the Children in Progressive-Era America exhibit.

“I think this project will be helpful for patrons and they will enjoy it. Patrons can look and see images of their parents and grandparents and enjoy that. And children can use this as a resource for school projects,” Kilby said: “We don’t have an archives in the community, so this kind of material isn’t readily available except through this program.”

Wendy Cornelisen, assistant state librarian for Library Innovation and Collaboration, Georgia Public Library Service, said “Many of Georgia’s public libraries have unique items that have been cherished by the local community for years. In the past, historians would have to spend time and money to get to that local history. Thanks to Digital Library of Georgia and DPLA, the Public Library Partnerships Project has helped uncover and share some of this history with students and scholars around the world. These unique items help paint a more complete picture of our state’s history.”

We hope that you enjoy these new exhibitions!

Share