digitized primary source materials involves fundamental shifts in the service
and teaching methods of curators, librarians, and teachers, regardless of
their audiences. This proposal seeks to develop a successful model program
to integrate digital primary source materials into K-12 curriculum and assignments,
as well as into the educational programs of museums and libraries. We propose
to bring together a group of libraries and museums and their digital content
with K-12 teachers, to identify reliable methods of integrating this content
into teaching units and learning guides, to demonstrate innovative technology-based
applications using these materials, and to evaluate and report on their
effectiveness. The primary areas of focus will include the following steps:
Museums and libraries contribute digitized primary source materials
and accompanying metadata in Dublin Core format to an online database
and search engine. This content will broaden the scope of subject coverage
in an existing database, and will provide valuable ties with the other
state-mandated Learning Standards for K-12 institutions in Illinois,
with work on transferring that model to other states.
a broad group of teachers to digital cultural heritage materials by
partnering with various outreach programs, such as pre-service training,
and the Moveable Feast
program (sponsored by Microsoft) in the University of Illinois College
of Education, which provides technology training for K-12 teachers around
the state. Opportunities for museum and library partners in "Teaching
with Digital Content" to participate in the technology training
will also be arranged.
concept-based training for teachers, curators and librarians in the
use of visual materials through the Visual
Thinking Strategies program. In museums, VTS helps beginner viewers
to grow in both confidence and ability to derive meaning from art. In
schools, VTS is a sequenced curriculum of art images, employing careful
looking and facilitated discussion. We plan to extend the VTS curriculum
beyond the analysis art images to include the analysis of digitized
historical artifacts and documents.
and libraries assist teachers by placing digital objects in their historical
context by utilizing innovative technologies to present this information
and by identifying and helping teachers locate and utilize other digital
resources that are freely accessible in electronic form.
a continuing channel of communication through the use of threaded email
discussion software, which serves as a virtual meeting place for interaction
among the museum curators, librarians and teachers.