Quick Summary
Minitex and Minnesota Digital Library staff recently attended the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies annual conference to share resources and build awareness of our services with social studies educators across the state.
Photo by MCSS Board President-Elect Mark Westpfahl
On February 26, Minitex librarians Ann Kaste and Carla Pfahl joined Minnesota Digital Library curator Stephanie Hess at the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies (MCSS) annual conference in St. Paul. This year’s theme was the "Power of Perspective." Attendees were treated to an inspiring keynote by Dr. Ed Ayers and Annie Evans from the University of Richmond, who developed the online project New American History.
Together, we presented a session on “Exploring History Online” to highlight all of the free and accessible primary and secondary sources teachers can use from eLibrary Minnesota (ELM) and the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL). Afterwards, we shared our resources at an exhibit table. Many of our visitors had not heard about our teacher resources and were very excited to start exploring them.
As first-time participants at this conference, we also attended several sessions to learn more about social studies education in Minnesota. Highlights included presentations about historical empathy, archaeology studies in the classroom, and an overview on the recently-approved statewide K-12 Academic Standards in Social Studies.
Overall, this was an excellent conference for us to attend to spread the word about our K-12 resources and we are looking forward to working with this community of educators again soon!
