Summer is the perfect time to take some time to explore the Library of Congress digital collections. You can simply use the URL: https://www.loc.gov/collections/. Alternatively, you can navigate from the LOC.gov homepage by clicking the menu icon to the right of the search bar at the top of the page, clicking the Discover link, then…
The Library of Congress YouTube™ channel features, “Timeless treasures and contemporary presentations from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.” On the Library’s YouTube homepage you will find a featured video as well as a browsable list of the most recent uploads and the Library’s playlists. Video Uploads To access all the videos the Library has uploaded,…
Music is such a powerful primary source and can really help us connect to and engage with a person or an event. The Library of Congress is full of digital music resources, including numerous sheet music collections and items. But what to do if you would like to hear the music but cannot play an instrument…
This is a guest post from Kelly Grotrian, an American History teacher at East Brunswick High School in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Google Forms is a great tool to use for student primary source analysis because it provides a single point of access for multiple sources and efficiently collates student responses into a spreadsheet which…
This is a guest post from Kelly Grotrian, an American History teacher at East Brunswick High School in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Far and away my favorite Google App for Education is Google Forms. Forms allows you to present a variety of primary sources to students in an organized fashion and to collect data on…
Here is very simple tip from TPS-Barat for printing high-quality black & white or sepia images that we use in our in-person workshops: ask the print shop to use a color printer to print the black and white images and print them on business-card card stock. And don’t forget to ask if they have educator discounts!…
Many images from the Library of Congress are available in several formats: lower resolution JPEG (.jpg), higher resolution JPEG (.jpg too but a larger file size) and TIFF (.tif). TIFF files are the largest and, therefore, the highest resolution files. TIFF files are often crucial to focus on analyzing small text or other details in primary…
This is a guest post by Ruth Ferris, an elementary school librarian from Billings, Montana, and a grantee in the TPS Regional Grant Program. It is always a pleasure when I can connect my love of books with my love of history, seasoned with technology. One favorite tool is ThingLink, which allows you to take a picture and embed links…
ThingLink is an online tool that allows you to layer images and videos with text, web links, and other media files. Most digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress, including most text documents, are saved as image files so ThingLink is a great tool for analyzing and annotating primary sources directly on the sources…
Can an article from 2009 really be useful in helping educators think about the pedagogy of integrating technology with primary source learning? The answer is absolutely! To learn why and how, read the TPS Journal article Technology Integration and Primary Sources: Linking the Learner to Learning written by Peggy O’Neill-Jones, Director of the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary…
This is a guest post from Kerry Gallagher, a Technology Integration Specialist at St. John’s Prep, a 1:1 iPad school serving grades 6-12, and former middle and high school history teacher. We learn about the lives of our friends partly through the images they share with us on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and…
Poetry 180 is a project of two-time U.S. Poet Laureate (2002-2003) Billy Collins. The Poetry Foundation describes Mr. Collins, “Dubbed ‘the most popular poet in America’ by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, Billy Collins is famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation…