Partner Meetings - Meeting Notes

AAM DIRECTORS MEETING
September 30 - October 2, 2004
Washington, DC

Present

Present at the meetings were national AAM staff members Chris Dennen, Karin Hedberg, Oran Mosteller, and Ove Andersen; ERC Executive Director John Hunter; LOC staff members Elizabeth Ridgway and Janet Starkweather; AAM directors Sandi Estep, Pat Pecoy, Nelly Hecker, Margo Tomaras, Marita Decker, Bob Pettis, Rhonda Clevenson, Mark Newman, Ed Shearin, Jerry Hostetler, Joy Rogers, Jodi Huggins, Wendy Fusco, Michael Brna, Barbara Kirby, Rick Satchwell, Cindy Rich, Pam Johnson, Bob Ervin, and Peggy O’Neill-Jones; and AAM partner staff members Byron Holdiman, Amy Martin, Symantha Petitt, Binod Pokhrel, and Samantha Cofield.

AAM directors Amy Wilkinson and Beth Coulter were unable to attend.

September 30 Library of Congress Orientation

About 12 AAM directors and staff who were visiting the Library of Congress (LOC) for the first time attended an all-day orientation organized by Elizabeth Ridgway, Educational Outreach Team Leader. Ms. Ridgway led participants on a tour of the LOC Web site and the Learning Page. Jan Grenci, Reference Specialist, Prints and Photographs Division, spoke about the selection, cataloguing, and digitizing of primary sources documents. Mike Hughes of the Office of the General Counsel addressed copyright issues of particular interest to educators. The group also toured the Jefferson Building, the oldest and most architecturally stunning of the LOC's three main downtown facilities.

October 1 Professional Development Activity

All attendees participated in a two-part professional development activity. First, the group was guided through the Brown vs. Board of Education exhibit by Daun van Ee, one of the curators of the exhibit. Next, Susan Mordan and Gail Petri led attendees through a new political cartoon activity, "It's No Laughing Matter," from the LOC's Learning Page, that can be used effectively in the classroom. The activity, based on political cartoons from the Brown vs. Board of Education exhibit, allows students to analyze cartoonists' persuasive techniques.

October 2 Directors Meeting

Welcome and Introductions

Barbara Kirby, facilitator and member of the Directors Meeting Planning Committee, welcomed the group. She announced two new members of the committee: Sandi Estep and Joy Rogers. She also thanked Mark Newman and Beth Coulter for their service on the committee. Mark and Beth are rotating off at the conclusion of this meeting.

National AAM Program Update

Chris Dennen, National AAM Program Director, addressed the group. He recognized two individuals who do not often receive recognition for their contributions to the AAM program: LOC Grant Administrator George Daves and ERC Executive Director John Hunter. He also recognized Elizabeth Ridgway for her tireless work on behalf of the program.

The AAM video conferencing initiative continues to grow and is becoming very successful. To-date, 42 LOC video conferences have been held specifically for the AAM program, with 540 teacher participants. With more AAM partners incorporating this feature in their workshops, AAM expects this number to reach 100 broadcasts in the very near future. The strategy has been to use video conferencing broadcasts in two ways: 1) to introduce the program in schools and encourage first-time participation; and 2) as an integrated part of an existing workshop series. Oran Mosteller has recently been named AAM’s Video Conferencing Coordinator.

The AAM Web site continues to expand and now contains all the basic AAM program information. The next phase of its growth will focus on program refinements. The site now has 600 unique visitors weekly, with an average of 11,000 weekly hits. At the end of 2004, the projected cumulative number of unique visitors will be 20,000. A survey conducted by AAM national staff last spring indicated mostly positive reaction from AAM directors and staff, especially in the area of content and content organization. Staff intend to follow up on other feedback received in the survey, and Dr. Dennen encouraged additional comment from users.

All home school lessons now have an interactive start features. Twelve new NC lessons will be online later this month. There have been some delays due to significant technical challenges and other unforeseen obstacles. The next plan is to create an online version of these lessons for use by regular classroom students as assigned by their teachers. (This will be completely separate from the home school lessons and the Home School Program Web site.) This new section will be launched and tested this fall.

The AAM lesson plan database now contains 59 lessons, with 51 more now in the vetting process. The process of putting a single lesson online, after vetting, takes about three to four hours per lesson. It is expected that more than 100 lessons will be online by the next meeting. A separate learning experiences database for the products of Phase II is being developed by the Ad Hoc Lesson Plan Committee. Joy Rogers, chair of this committee, will make a report later in the meeting.

Dr. Dennen summarized the UNCA Computer Literacy program for at-risk middle school youth. This program has been running for four years at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. A complete summary of that project to-date will be posted online soon.

The Telephone Support Line (a.k.a. "Hotline") has recently been closed due to low usage. Dr. Dennen recognized that this was directly due to the valuable and consistent support provided to teachers by each AAM partner, thereby rendering the Hotline unnecessary to the program.

Dr. Dennen announced the release of an exhibit kit for AAM partners. AAM staff have developed a kit of graphic files that may be used to create banners, posters, and handouts for use at conferences, presentations, information booths/tables, and poster sessions. The kit components will be available on the AAM Web site very soon.

There are two books in production on AAM topics. The first is the history being written by Jim Brown, a professor at Mars Hill College, covering the first four years of the project in general and Phase I in particular. The book is in its final stages of production, but has been greatly delayed. The second book is being spearheaded by Joy Rogers and will focus on the AAM program's approach to using primary resources. Several directors are contributing sections. No AAM funds are being used for this project.

At the end of the last EDC evaluation, a number of recommendations were made, many of which are already being addressed in various aspects of the program. Dr. Dennen is working on a response for the four remaining items that need to be addressed. This report will be revealed to the group following review and approval by the LOC and ERC. Once the AAM response has been approved, the Executive Committee will be asked to develop an action plan. The four points are:

Library and Media Specialists
We should start recording our collective experiences in teaching Librarians and media specialists. These professionals play an important role in consulting with, and guiding, classroom teachers and their students. If appropriate, we should develop and publish specific strategies, curricula, and materials for this group.

Formal Alumni Program
We have done well supporting, and benefiting from the support, of our alumni at the partner level. The next step is to create a national alumni program.

Pathfinders
One tool that seems to be useful for our teachers is a list of LOC primary source materials that is especially well suited for supporting specific topics at each grade level. The challenge is to create lists that are specific enough to be useful and general enough to be used across the States, and will not need constant updating.

Learning Experiences Database
We need to form the evaluation committee so that the directors can begin to submit materials.

LOC Updates

Elizabeth Ridgway provided an update on LOC online activities. An electronic "library card" has been developed by the LOC and Ms. Ridgway distributed a sample to each participant. This is a CD with an intro and overview to the LOC. She also distributed two handouts, one showing collections that are organized by subject matter, and one to track use of digitized resources.

Ms. Ridgway demonstrated the version 1.5 redesign of the American Memory Web site, which will go live in a few weeks. The majority of changes are in organization and page layout. A global navigation feature is being added. The issue of book marking specific items is not being addressed is this phase, but will be implemented gradually. This change will require a significant period of time.

Several collections have been converted to the 1.5 style. All new collections will be displayed in this format. Older collections will be converted based on a priority system.

Partner Presentations

Rhonda Clevenson, from the Northern Virginia Schools Partnership, demonstrated an activity on "Presidents." Each participant was given a colored folder with an image of a photo or print (letter, manuscript, etc.). Participants gathered into groups according to the president their folder represented. Groups were asked to contemplate questions, such as: what skills does a president need to be an effective leader? Groups then reassembled according to the color of their folders and discussed the common theme represented by their folders. Dr. Clevenson discussed ways in which this activity could be adapted to classroom use.

Bob Pettis of USC Upstate (South Carolina) demonstrated a quick and easy way for teachers to track citations for their primary resources and collections.

Peggy O'Neill-Jones of Metro State College of Denver (Colorado) provided an overview of her workshop series. Her program uses a rich media approach demonstrated with three different lesson plan prototypes. Ms. Jones showed how rich media can be used, and also the differences between "regular" media and rich media.

EDC Evaluation Report

Lauren Goldenberg and Bill Tally from the EDC presented. They have been tasked by the ERC to produce a new evaluation report on Phase II of the AAM program. A draft framework is now being developed. The process will end in December 2005 with the release of a new report. EDC has been involved in evaluating American Memory programs since 1995, including the American Memory Fellows Program.

Ms. Goldenberg said several interviews have been conducted with AAM directors. She addressed program goals that directors named and how they rated their importance. AAM partners are collecting data in very different ways, such as through questionnaires for teachers and school districts. EDC is recommending that directors consider using standardized feedback tools.

The first phase of the evaluation will involve building a database of educators and other AAM program enrollees. A meaningful unit of instruction must be defined (i.e., how many contact hours constitutes a unit of instruction?). General data and feedback collection will be accompanied by periodic in-depth case studies. Data collection will include the basic statistics that AAM directors are collecting, such as number of enrollees, number and type of workshops, etc.

Three local evaluation strategies are being recommended: 1) Process measures to discover how participants respond to workshops, 2) performance measures to gauge teacher knowledge in key areas matched to program goals, and 3) descriptive measures to capture rich portraits of AAM partner activities and their results. Directors will be given "toolboxes" of evaluation strategies and instruments that can be selected for various applications specific to individual AAM programs. Mr. Tally demonstrated some possible evaluation tools from the toolbox, using both online and paper instruments.

Mr. Tally and Ms. Goldenberg took questions from the group. Many future opportunities for feedback will be made available, including the formation of an advisory group comprised of directors. There was considerable discussion about the general plan and its goals. Several directors had questions about the framework and offered suggestions for aspects to consider in the design. When providing feedback, Dr. Dennen urged everyone (partners, ERC, LOC) to think in terms of their own needs only, and not those of the entire group (i.e., each entity or institution should define what they are seeking in this process for their own goals and purposes only).

Learning Experiences Database

Joy Rogers reported on the work of her ad hoc committee. She distributed a matrix that illustrated the proposed framework for this database and asked for comment from the group. The initial lessons that will be accepted will be determined by consensus of the committee. An evaluation process will be developed by the committee to determine how new material will be accepted and by what criteria in order to keep the database limited to 150 plans (three per category). There was discussion on whether plans that are accepted into the database should be reformatted into a standard AAM-determined format for increased usability. Dr. Dennen asked the Executive Committee to review this report and recommend the next action step for this process, such as the possible formation of standing committee.

Primary Source Lesson Examples

Barbara Kirby, Ann Canning, and Amy Martin from Waynesburg College (Pennsylvania) presented a map activity showing historic and contemporary panoramic (a.k.a., bird's eye view) maps of Washington, DC. An activity like this can be used to illustrate, discuss, and understand change in a city. To do this activity in their workshops, the staff have converted LOC maps to iMap format. Waynesburg has a special arrangement with the R. J. Lee Group to use this program (which is still in beta format) and distribute it to their workshop participants. They have used this technique with panoramic photos. This approach allows in-depth analysis of material. MrSID software is less dynamic than the iMap.

Wendy Fusco from Montreat College (North Carolina) demonstrated how she models photo analysis activities with her teachers. This has been a very successful component of her Phase II program because teachers can take away with them a very simple but powerful classroom activity and apply it immediately.

Ed Shearin from Mars Hill College (North Carolina) presented an overview of his digital storytelling workshop series. Due to regular post-workshop program evaluation by the Mars Hill AAM team, the curriculum for Level 1 is now in its sixth revision. Using digital cameras, teachers are shown the basics of photography to begin the process of learning good digital storytelling techniques. Dr. Shearin showed some examples of digital stories created by teachers.

Ad Hoc LiveText Committee Report

Peggy O'Neill-Jones, committee chair, reported. LiveText (www.livetext.com) is a developer of standard-led, online educational services tailored to the particular needs and challenges of educators. The program is available to teachers and teacher candidates as a paid subscriber service, but is free to college faculty. The committee is exploring potential use of this service by AAM and as a place to house AAM teacher products. Ms. Jones demonstrated some ways this could be achieved. LiveText has offered to create a specific AAM domain and will give each AAM participant a free one-year subscription.

Using LiveText would likely require the development of a standard AAM lesson plan template that all AAM participants could use. Lesson plans can be matched to state standards and are all organized by subject, grade level, and topic.

There was discussion at-length about the pros and cons of LiveText, based on the experiences of several directors (fees, technical issues, etc.). Participants also debated the need for another Web site to supplement those of the national AAM program and partner programs that already contain teacher products. Ms. Jones will conduct some follow-up activity with LiveText to see whether a test AAM site can be created and demonstrated. Dr. Dennen also asked the committee to continue its exploratory work.

Next Meeting

The next directors meeting is scheduled for April 14-15, 2005, in Washington, DC. Directors are asked to contact any member of the Directors Meeting Planning Committee with ideas for that meeting's agenda.

An Adventure of the American Mind is made available through a Library of Congress grant funded by the U.S. Congress. AAM is administered through the Education and Research Consortium of the Western Carolinas Inc.
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