Spring Roundup: Primary source political cartoons and resources for understanding bias and perspective
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
- Friday: Updates to Adobe Reader and introducing Evernote [Productivity tools]
- Monday: A different perspective on validating resources [Information Literacy]
- Today: Primary source political cartoons and resources for understanding bias and perspective [Information Literacy]
- Wednesday: When to credit an image source [Intellectual Property and Ethics]
via Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has continued to develop material sets to assist teachers in utilizing the library’s resources. One such collection is their Primary Sources section.
Newly added sets in this collection include political cartoons and sources on children’s lives at the turn of the 20th century.
via Library of Congress
Guides for teachers and students offer some excellent questions to encourage the reader to think critically about the resource. You may note that these are very similar to the critical questions in yesterday’s post on validating resources.
From the LOC Teachers’ Resources on Primary Documents:
Encourage students to speculate about each source, its creator, and its context.
- What was happening during this time period?
- What was the creator’s purpose in making this primary source?
- What does the creator do to get his or her point across?
- What was this primary source’s audience?
- What biases or stereotypes do you see?
Ask if this source agrees with other primary sources, or with what the students already know.
- Ask students to test their assumptions about the past.
- Ask students to find other primary or secondary sources that offer support or contradiction.
[via Library of Congress]