The State Library of Victoria (Australia) just released, Ergo, a resource designed as a "practical guide to research, essay writing and studying shows you how to find resources, write great essays and prepare for exams."
In addition, the site contains original documents, images and maps from the archives of the State Library of Victoria that students can use in their reports. I learned about this exciting new initiative from Australian uber blogger Judy O'Connell.
One of her colleagues from the State Library of Victoria, Andrew Hiskens, was involved in the development of the project.
Judy posted a snippet of a conversation she had with Andrew explaining the background behind:
"Ergo took about 18 months to develop. It was designed to be a tool to assist secondary students in learning to research (hence pared back words, images with rollovers for visual learners and short video clips from writers, historians and scientists). We then coupled that with unique resources form our own collections largely around the history of Melbourne and Victoria.
The site is a practical guide to research, essay writing and studying and shows how to find resources, write great essays and prepare for exams. It also has a huge range of original documents and images.
The idea of the site is to help students make their work the very best it can be! And we know that that means excellent research, writing and study skills.
The site includes:
- easy to follow guides to research, essay writing and study skills
- over 500 digitised resources from the State Library’s collections
- worked examples available at point of need, illustrating bias in primary sources, how to understand an essay question and much more
- video interviews with prominent authors, historians and artists including Helen Garner and Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty
- teacher and student resources with a focus on critical literacy and thinking processes."
This looks like a fantastic project for both students and teachers. It will be interesting to hear how students respond and what type of feedback they provide the ERGO team.
Congratulations to Andrew and his team on the launch of ERGO. And thanks to Judy for sharing this information with the edusphere.
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