Alchemy and Innovation: Cultivating an Appreciation for Primary Sources in Younger Students

Abstract

In a time of seemingly Instant access to information, students are becoming increasingly removed from physical primary source materials. Steve Kolowich explains this disconnection between the original objects and their digital counterparts in this way: “Students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar.”² Introducing elementary school students to the differences between primary sources and their digital surrogates is an excellent way to highlight the continued cultural signifi-cance of manuscript documents and to foster the development of the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate media resources in the new . . .