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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: Randall Bass <bassr@GUSUN.GEORGETOWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Applying New Knowledge
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Wow, Monica. Thanks for the description of the wonderful assignment. Like
so many of the descriptions and postings from other Fellows, your scenario
reinforces how important--and in some ways unfortunately against the
grain--the work of the Fellows is in using new media to help students
"really understand something" (your phrase).
Your post came as I was sitting here preparing a presentation I'm giving
tomorrow to the Association of Colleges in the Twin Cities on...the
importance of focusing new media on the goals of "teaching for
understanding." More and more, as I go around the country, I'm struck--and
mildly depressed--by how divorced people's thinking about technology
is from their thinking about the broad and enduring goals of understanding
that ought to be at the heart of curriculum design. (Of course that
assumes that people are thinking about "goals of understanding" in the
first place).
Building bridges between new media and teaching for understanding is one
of the really vital contributions the community of Fellows makes.
Thanks.
Randy
On Tue, 25 May 1999, Monica R. Edinger wrote:
> I just wanted to describe a wonderful experience I had today which proved
> how well my fourth graders achieved the goals I had for them when they did
> my American Memory lesson (History Firsthand) this past January. Among
> other outcomes I wanted them to really understand something about how to
> do on-line searches.
>
> I am currently doing a unit on the Constitution. A little background: all
> year long my students work on the idea of close reading and annotating. In
> September I introduce these ideas with an E.B. White study. They learn how
> to read a chapter closely, annotating it as well. Midyear they study the
> Pilgrims and learn how to use their annotating and close reading skills
> for information texts and primary sources. Now they are putting these
> skills all together by annotating the Constitution. Thus, they go from
> doing this with a work of fiction (Charlotte's Web ) to factual narratives
> (texts about and by the Pilgrims) to a non-narrative text. I won't go
> into all I do here, but I assure you that there is a lot of work done
> learning about the Constitution before they do this. There is also more
> that they do afterwards (with the amendments and civil rights.) Also, we
> bring current events into it as well. (e.g. recent gun control
> legislation.)
>
> At the moment the children are working in groups and creating large
> posters of their annotations. For example, one poster is of Article I. I
> took a version of the Constitution off the National Archives site and then
> changed the font size to have it fit our chart paper. The kids glued these
> onto large chart paper and are putting their annotations around the
> document. Their objective is to create an annotated version for other
> fourth graders. Thus, they are writing definitions for things in language
> their peers would understand. Also, providing many examples. Many need to
> be visual. They are drawing pictures for some (e.g. someone driving
> through New Jersey holding a New York drivers license for Article IV.) So
> when they started looking on the Internet for images where do you think
> they went? American Memory! And it is wonderful to see how facile they
> are with it. Of the photograph collections they mainly know the Detroit
> Publishing Collection, but are easily moving into others such as the on on
> the Presidents. They've found pictures of the Supreme Court, the Capital,
> Nixon, Clinton, Johnson, and more . In fact, one child found a great
> drawing of Johnson's impeachment trial.
>
> I am just delighted to see them applying all that they learned a few
> months ago in a new way. No better proof for me of the success of my unit
> and also proof that this age group can indeed use this wonderful resource!
>
> Monica
>
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