Social+Studies

Pedagogical actions framing teaching and learning
Everybody felt that social studies has a lot of freedom to use technology. Students need technological skills to be competitive in the real world. As educators we need to help students become prepared. Using technology has so many opportunities for our students.

We were in agreement that guiding students through the internet is important. Students need to be able to evaluate the information they find on the web. Also learning how to research is an invaluable tool that will contribute to becoming an effective citizen. Many of the responses talked about how students go to “google” or “ask” and type in the entire question. Students need to be taught how to use effective researching skills.

Almost everyone talked about helping students use non-linear text. Reading digital media is much different for many people. Part of using technology is teaching students digital reading strategies. The author of the chapter says, “Social studies teachers are working to develop critical medial literacy skills among their students.”

Negative Implications?
Many of the responses talked about the negative ways that students are using technology. Facebook, myspace, and texting were just a few that were talked about. The responses seemed a bit divided in that technology is hindering student education compared to advancing student education. Most responses did agree that teaching them, “Etiquette, responsibility, rights, safety and security” is the way to go. (Lee, p. 138) Lee also does a good job acknowledged these fears and provided suggestions and ideas that could help in a classroom.

Final Thought
Every response stated in someway that they took something away from the chapter that they could use in their teaching.

//(This synthesis of their classmate's reactions to Chapter 6 is by Tara and Abby, EDU 583, Spring 2010)//

Pre-K
 * "[|Christina's Classroom]" is a blog about social studies in an early childhood classroom. She uses a variety of technologies on a regular basis to bring the world into her class.

Elementary
 * [|Apples 4 the Teacher] has this list of elementary social studies activities and interactive educational online learning games
 * The British Broadcasting Company's (BBC) educational Web site has [|geography resources for children ages 4-11]. These include online games, videos, and age-appropriate resources.

Middle School
 * [|Teachnology]"developed in response to the challenges associated with Twenty-First Century Learners: The Net-Generation. To meet these challenges, the company first developed a method for individuals to access free on-line resources that support classroom instruction. This link is to their social studies resources.
 * [|National Geographic] has a new (beta version) Web site of content information about a variety of topics, especially maps and geography.

High School- > >
 * [|Best History Sites], "created by EdTechTeacher Inc, is an award-winning portal that contains annotated links to over 1200 history web sites as well as links to hundreds of quality K-12 history lesson plans, history teacher guides, history activities, history games, history quizzes, and more."
 * [|National Archives] has primary documents and resources for using them in high school classroom.

Across All Grade Levels
 * Started by Susan Brooks and Bill Byles in 1997, Internet 4 Classrooms began a collaborative effort to gather resources for teachers. Though the total site has resources for all subjects and all grade levels, this collection of resources for [|Social Studies] is particularly rich and is sorted by grade level.
 * [|Teaching History.org] has grade level specific resources for history.
 * [|Maine Memory Network], "a project of the Maine Historical Society, provides access to thousands of historical items belonging to over 200 organizations from across Maine. Search for or browse these items, explore online exhibits, or create your own collection of images from the database." MMN's [|Digital Classroom] is a collection of resources "designed to help teachers and students learn about Maine history, use Maine Memory effectively, and explore the history of their own communities" by using the Maine Memory Network. One feature in The Digital Classroom is [|Finding Katahdin Online] which includes more than 50 Maine Studies lesson plans and hundreds of primary source documents tied to the acclaimed Maine Studies text book //Finding Katahdin// (University of Maine Press, 2002).