After several months of preparation, the “An Adventure of the American Mind” program in Colorado (AAM-Colorado) is ready to start working with area school districts to help educators and students discover the treasures of the Library of Congress.

The $2 million-federally funded program, awarded to Metro State last fall, will train teachers to integrate digital technology and the Library of Congress online archives into their classroom curricula.

To date, the AAM-Colorado staff has made introductory presentations to the Jefferson County and Sheridan School Districts about the program and the Library of Congress Web site, and they will soon give a presentation to Denver Public Schools. The next step is to schedule teacher workshops for in-depth instruction on primary-source research and integrating technology into the classroom.

“The teachers are just amazed at what is available,” said Peggy O’Neill-Jones, AAM - Colorado director and professor of technical communication at Metro.

Before many of the archives of the Library of Congress were digitized, the documents were often only available to curators or Ph.D.s who traveled to Washington, D.C., explained O’Neill-Jones. “Now, all these incredible things (such as the Declaration of Independence and Alexander Graham Bell’s drawing of a telephone) that belong to the American people are more accessible to the average kid.”

One of the key focuses of the four-year grant will be to train current and future teachers to help students access the Library of Congress as a primary source research tool via the Internet. Primary sources are snippets of history such as letters, diaries, newspapers and photos, which often come with minimal context.

Primary-source research is currently a popular tool in education because it requires critical thinking skills and analysis from students, according to O’Neill-Jones. “Students can see original documents and either accept a given conclusion or draw their own conclusions.”

Metro State is one of 10 higher education institutions nationwide and the only college or university in Colorado to receive this grant. In addition to training students in its teacher education program, Metro will work with school districts in the metro-Denver area and across the state to provide training to K-12 teachers.

The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with nearly 19 million books, 2.6 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps and 56 million manuscripts.

For more information on AAM – Colorado, visit http://aamcolorado.mscd.edu or contact Peggy O’Neill-Jones at 303-352-4945 or aamcolorado@mscd.edu.