Helping Colorado Educators and Students Discover the Treasures
of the Library of Congress

AAM-Colorado Newsletter • Edition 5 • January 2006

• Librarian Days Coming Up in February
• Redeeming Digital Resource Certificates
• Colorado School District Takes on American Memory Training Locally
• AAM-Colorado Mentors Directory
• Spring, Summer 2006 Workshop Schedule now Online
• AAM-Colorado at 2005-2006 Conferences
• Workshops for Metro State
  Faculty and Staff
• Digital Storytelling in 2006
  

Spring 2006 Workshops
Begin January 16!
Workshops are Offered
at No Charge to
Colorado K-12 Educators

Stories from AAM-Colorado Participants
Educators are reporting the benefits of AAM-Colorado training in their schools and districts. A number of educators have traveled a long distance to attend AAM-Colorado workshops, with one participant traveling 140 miles to attend, even during a snowstorm. Participants from Colorado regions that are far from Denver are pleased to have the option of taking the workshops online rather than traveling.

Colorado educator Michelle Pearson visited Washington, D.C. in July 2005, and stopped by the Library of Congress to research her Learning Activities Development (LAD) project on the topic of the White House as home, museum, workplace, and office. A librarian at the LOC walked Michelle through the process of using the materials, gave her a table, and looked up reference after reference in the LOC's index of collections, bringing Michelle the primary sources she found in the "vaults."

Michelle recalls, "finally I stumbled across something totally fun — the autograph book included in the Roosevelt collection. I think [the librarian] was as excited as I was at the find. She left the desk and came to go through the pages with me. She spent a good amount of time trying to decipher the writing and the people in the book. She then told me I could photograph the pages with a digital camera. What a delight to an educator."

Among the stacks of the LOC, Michelle's LAD project, Archie's Autographs: White House Visitors at the Turn of the 20th Century, was born. Two days later it was hard for Michelle to say goodbye to the collection as she headed home. The librarian said, "come back again — I'll be here," and Michelle hopes she will be.

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Librarian Days Coming Up in February
AAM-Colorado, along with the Auraria Library and Post-News Educational Services, is planning its second Librarian Days, scheduled for Friday, February 10 and Saturday, February 11. On Friday, librarians will be asked to invite a teacher of their choice to join them to learn about the American Memory program and digital primary sources from the Library of Congress and other collections, including local initiatives such as the Denver Public Library's Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library and Western History/Genealogy Department, and the Collaborative Digitization Program.

On Saturday, Colorado educators will be invited to sign up for All-Day Sessions, with topics to include Digital Storytelling and Voices of America (oral histories), Mastering American Memory … and More, Primary Sources and the Presidency: Using Primary Sources to Enhance Instruction on the Presidency and the White House, and Intel® Teach to the Future: Interactive Web-based Tools and Higher Order Thinking.

The Voices of America project is an initiative of Post-News Educational Services that begins in February. Real-life witnesses tell their stories in this series of oral histories. The 16-installment program includes a teacher's guide, CSAP-style questions, journals for students to save their stories, and weekly writing prompts that encourage them to collect their own oral histories. AAM-Colorado will collaborate with Post-News Educational Services to promote this project at Librarian Days.

More information about Librarian Days can be found at http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu/libday.htm.

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Redeeming Digital Resource Certificates
Participants who complete AAM-Colorado workshops receive up to $450 in Digital Resource Certificates redeemable for digital primary source materials for use in their schools and classrooms. Certificates are redeemable at the AAM-Colorado Digital Primary Resource Center (DPRC) on Metro State's Auraria campus.

Digital Resource Certificates enable participants to order printouts and other digital materials to be provided by the AAM-Colorado staff. Among the materials the DPRC staff provides are professional-quality color or black and white printouts of primary sources on a variety of paper types or as transparencies, laminated posters, photos, large-format maps, and discs containing the primary sources as requested by the participant.

AAM-Colorado workshop participants may redeem their Digital Resource Certificates to order Learning Activities Development project lesson resources, with topics such as Analyzing World War I and II Propaganda and Uncovering the Evolution of the Rights of African Americans Using American Memory. Certificates may also be redeemed to order Thematic Express Adventure Modules (TEAM) Packets, with collections that include primary sources such as printouts of the check for the purchase of Alaska in the Milestone Documents packet, and Alexander Graham Bell's design sketch of the early telephone in the Great Inventions packet.

The DPRC Price List (PDF, 219KB) is available on the AAM-Colorado Web site. Use the online Digital Resource order form to redeem your Digital Resource Certificates, or download the Primary Source order form in Word (752KB) or PDF (113KB) format.

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Colorado School District Takes on American Memory Training Locally
Donna Levene, former Library of Congress American Memory Fellow and former Media Specialist in Cherry Creek School District, began teaching AAM-Colorado Workshop Series I, II, and III to Cherry Creek educators in December 2005.

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AAM-Colorado Mentors Directory
AAM-Colorado introduces its Mentors Directory, a listing of Colorado educators who have participated in AAM-Colorado workshops and would like to help promote the program in their schools and districts. The Mentors Directory Web page will be available online in spring semester 2006. Colorado educators who would like to be listed on the Mentors Directory page may contact AAM-Colorado Online Communication Developer Lisa Bradshaw at bradshaw@mscd.edu or 303-352-4989.

Spring, Summer 2006 Workshop Schedule now Online
AAM-Colorado is preparing for a busy spring 2006, with Saturday and Online workshops scheduled throughout the semester, and On-Location workshop groups to be scheduled as needed. The AAM-Colorado spring and summer workshop schedules are available at:

• http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu/schedulespring2006.htm
• http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu/schedulesum2006.htm

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AAM-Colorado at 2005-2006 Conferences
AAM-Colorado was pleased to present poster sessions about the American Memory program and digital primary sources at the annual Technology/Leadership/Learning (T+L2) Conference in October, and the Colorado Association of Libraries (CAL) Conference in November. At the CAL conference, AAM-Colorado Assistant Director Chris Jennings and Workshop Instructor Donna Levene presented their Voice of the People - Using Woody Guthrie's Songs and Writings with other Primary Sources to Reflect the Great Depression.

AAM-Colorado is scheduled to present at the upcoming TechEd International Conference & Exposition in March, the Colorado Council for the Social Studies Conference and the TELECOOP Conference in April, and the Technology in Education Conference in June.

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Workshops for Metro State Faculty and Staff
In August 2005, AAM-Colorado hosted a virtual tour of the Library of Congress' American Memory Web site for Chairs at Metro State. In November, AAM-Colorado began hosting these workshops for Metro State faculty and staff. The virtual tour includes the material covered in AAM-Colorado's Workshop 1, Introducing the Library of Congress American Memory Project and Online Primary Sources. Parts of Workshop 2, Finding and Accessing Primary Sources for the Classroom, are introduced as well. AAM-Colorado plans to offer the workshops on an ongoing basis in 2006.

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Digital Storytelling in 2006
AAM-Colorado Saturday Digital Storytelling Workshop sessions are planned for spring and summer 2006. Participants can tie local news to national primary sources, and interweave them with personal or family events, memories, and histories. Veterans, survivors of the Dust Bowl, survivors of the '60s, musicians, and survivors of the millennium change are all examples of the people who can create an oral history as a starting point.

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AAM-Colorado Spring 2006 Workshops Begin January 16!
Contact AAM-Colorado at 303-352-4945 or aamcolorado@mscd.edu
for details about enrolling in AAM-Colorado Workshops.

Please do not respond to this e-mail. Instead, use the contact information below.

An Adventure of the American Mind – Colorado
Metropolitan State College of Denver
PO Box 173362, Campus Box 35
Denver, CO 80217

Phone 303-352-4945 • Fax 303-352-4987
E-mail aamcolorado@mscd.edu • Web http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu/