Want to help students learn more about how photographs can be manipulated to tell a story or change someone’s opinion or point of view? The Prints and Photographs Division has presented a case study based on a reference question about a photograph of Ulysses S. Grant. Students can use the clues provided to determine if the photograph is real or not. Want students to learn more? Have them look at the special presentation “Does the Camera Ever Lie” found in the Selected Civil War Photographs collection in American Memory.

As we get closer to Election Day help students learn more about the process. Our Elections Thematic Resource page provides links a variety of sources focusing on the election process. Also visit the Political Cartoons Thematic Resource page <http://memory.loc.gov/learn/community/cc_pcartoon.php> to access links to collections of political cartoons and our It’s No Laughing Matter Political Analysis exercise.

The Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and the Center for the Book invite everyone to join them and the Consortium of Latin American Studies program for the awarding of the Americas Award for Children and Young Adult Literature to Yuyi Morales and Margarita Engle, the authors of Just in Case: A Tricksters Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book and The Surrender Tree: Portraits of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom. The ceremony will take place on Saturday, October 17th from 10am-12 noon in the Mumford Room in the James Madison Building at the Library of Congress. The Américas Award is given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States. Please call 202-707-2013 to confirm your attendance.

Here are two special announcements:

Apply to be part of the Internet Archive k-12 project
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/

Could your school be one of 10 middle or high schools helping to capture and archive today’s primary source materials on the Web?

A small number of individuals and institutions recognize the importance of archiving and preserving the often transitory digital cultural artifacts that are distributed over the Web. But so far, the vast majority of decisions about what Web sites will live into the future have been made by adults, and reflect adults’ sensibilities about what constitutes the important stuff of history. The Internet Archive, the Library of Congress and California Digital Library are collaborating on a project that explores archiving the Web from the perspective of adolescents.

Find a complete project description and the brief application in the "Featured Resources" section at http://www.loc.gov/teachers/. Apply by September 30 for full consideration.

Constitution Day Resources from the Library of Congress
http://thomas.loc.gov/teachers/constitution.html

In celebration of Constitution Day, the Library of Congress has compiled a variety of materials from across its collections. This year, the Library introduced two lesson plan that help students analyze drafts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to discover the process involved in creating the new nation. New online activities for secondary students help students connect particular phrases and ideas set down in these two documents with the texts that preceded them. A third new online activity for elementary students helps them get acquainted with some of the words related to the founding documents of the United States. Explore these rich resources and features to learn more about one of America’s most important documents.

Looking for information about foreign countries? Visit Portals to the World to find links to high quality websites vetted by Library of Congress staff members. Many of them are in the language of the country; perfect for those teaching foreign languages.

Interested in bringing folklore materials into your classroom? Visit the American Folklife Center where you can learn about their heritage projects where they work to encourage students to learn more about their communities, see lesson plans using folklore activities, link to American Memory collections that highlight folklore materials and learn how to send for a poster providing additional ideas to use in your classroom.

If you were unable to come to the Library to see the lecture series on digital natives three of the four lectures are now available to view as cybercasts. Lectures include Edith Ackermann speaking on The Anthropology of Digital Natives, Steven Berlin Johnson discussing the response to his argument that popular culture is growing more complex and cognitively challenging, and is not racing downward towards a lowest common denominator, Michael Wesch discussing the impact of You Tube on our world and Douglas Rushkoff speaking about the profound impact of interactive technologies, from the remote control to the joystick to the computer keyboard.

The 2009 National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will be held on Saturday, September 26, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The festival is free and open to the public. Authors expected include Kate DiCamillo, Shannon Hale, Lois Lowry, Jon Scieszka, Judy Blume, Jacqueline Woodson, James Patterson and Carmen Agra Deedy. Visit the Book Festival website to learn more and to see webcast from authors from previous years.

Visit the Library’s Poetry website to learn more about the new Poet Laureate Pat Ryan. Ryan, a resident of Marin County, California, has written six books of poetry and has won numerous award including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 2004 Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Award, the 2000 Union League Poetry Prize and the Maurice English Poetry Award and four Pushcart prizes. On the poetry website you can read Ryan’s poem “Turtle”, access a list of online resources about Ryan and learn more about the position of Poet Laureate and the people who have held this position.

Have you visited the MyLOC.gov site yet? In addition to seeing the new online exhibits and the virtual tour of the Jefferson Building, make sure to look at our collection of new educational activities. These include teacher tested lesson plans on drafting the constitution, the decision to purchase Jefferson’s library and the details found on the Waldseemüller map. Also included are word searches, a game using actual books from Jefferson’s Library and an opportunity for students to craft an alternative version of the Declaration of Independence.

Journeys and Crossings presentations allow students to hear from the Library’s curatorial staff about collections and resources of interest. The newest Journeys and Crossings look at Library resources on the Amish, the life of gold miners in the mid-19th century, and the development of school gardens. All Journeys and Crossings presentations include links to web resources and a bibliography including books for younger readers.

Join members of the Library’s Educational Outreach team at the National Educational Computing Conference at the Gonzales Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas. Visit us in the exhibition area at booth 9924. We will be doing in-booth presentations highlighting additions to the Library’s website and tips on teaching using our online resources. In addition Educational Outreach staff will be presenting a workshop Teaching with Primary Sources to Promote Media and Traditional Literacies on Sunday, June 29 from 8:30-11:30. Information on the workshop can be found at http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2008/program/search_results_details.php?sessionid=42044092&selection_id=42636061&rownumber=1&max=1&gopage= . For more information about the conference visit the NECC conference website at http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2008/.

The Digital Reference Section has created several new web guides, highlighting online resources on Gwendolyn Brooks, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, Alexander Hamilton, Presidents William Howard Taft, Grover Cleveland and Zachary Taylor, Poet Laureate Kay Ryan and the states of Georgia, New York and New Hampshire. See these guides and many others at the website listed above.

More video material has been uploaded to YouTube in the past six months than has ever been aired on all major networks combined, according to cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch. Wesch will discuss the three-year-old video-sharing Web site in a lecture titled "The Anthropology of YouTube" at 4 p.m. on Monday, June 23, in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

This is the third in a series of lectures on digital natives sponsored by the Library’s John W. Kluge Center. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. The lecture will be available at a later date as a webcast at www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/

Looking for current maps of places mentioned in the nightly news? Visit our Places in the News website. Included is basic information about the country from the CIA World Factbook as well as maps that are usually from federal government agencies. Users can also link to maps of previous places in the news.

As we pause to honor America’s veterans on Veterans Day consider having your students visit the Veterans History project website. They can listen to the stories of veterans or read chapters from the book “Forever a Soldier.” Students may also want to interview family members and friends who have been veterans following the procedures listed on the website and then consider offering these interviews to the Library for addition to the collection of oral histories and other materials.

The second lecture in the Kluge Center series on Digital Natives will take place on Monday, May 12 at 4:00 PM in the Montpelier Room, Madison Building of the Library of Congress. Steven Berlin Johnson will discuss his book, “Everything Bad is Good for You.” Johnson will be joined by Derrick Dekerckhove, Edith Ackerman, and Marc Prensky.

Sponsored by the Library's John W. Kluge Center, the event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. The lecture will be available at a later date as a webcast at www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/.

For those who missed Edith Ackerman’s April 4th speech on the Anthropology of Digital Natives, the webcast is now available at http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4294

Correction: The 2008 National Book Festival will take place on September 27 not September 28.

Visit our Historic Baseball Resources page where you can learn more about the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” find links to historic baseball cards and see resources that teachers can use in the classroom.

The 2008 National Book Festival will take place on September 28, 2008 on the National Mall. Visit the book festival website to see cybercasts of previous festivals, link to our Young Readers Tool kit and in late summer see who will be joining us this year.

Looking for ways to combine primary sources and poetry? Our new activity Making Connections through Poetry: Finding the Heart in History allows students to review and analyze primary sources and then synthesize the information and create poetry based on what they have learned. Students can print out their poems and the primary sources on which they are based and teachers can compile the poems and make chapter books that can be shared with students, other teachers and parents.